Eagle in a Cage (1972)

          Less a fact-based recitation of historical events and more a poetic meditation on power, Eagle in a Cage explores the final phase of Napoleon Bonaparte’s extraordinary life. Granted asylum by the British Empire following his legendary defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon was exiled to the small island of St. Helena, where he died six years later. Millard Lampell’s script, a version of which was first produced for television in 1965 with Trevor Howard starring, condenses the early days of the St. Helena incarceration into a tight drama filled with political machinations and sexual intrigue. Lampell’s version of Napoleon is not a man resigned to ignominy, bur rather a virile conqueror scheming to reclaim his position as Emperor of France. Among the many liberties that Lampell takes is suggesting that Napoleon made a brazen escape attempt, even though history indicates that Napoleon suffered debilitating health problems throughout his time on St. Helena.

          Its relationship to the truth notwithstanding, Eagle in a Cage bursts with energy, ideas, and lofty language. Furthermore, UK actor Kenneth Haigh gives a lusty performance in the leading role, imbuing Napoleon with ego, lyricism, and malice. (The fact that Haigh doesn’t even attempt a French accent is distracting, and so is the unexplained casting of African-American actor Moses Gunn as Napoleon’s principal aide.)

          Much of the story concerns Napoleon’s friction with Sir Hudson Lowe (Ralph Richardson), the haughty soldier charged with supervising Napoleon’s incarceration. Emboldened by the opportunity to humiliate a legendary figure, Lowe represents the effect that proximity to greatness has on weak people. Conversely, Lord Sissal (John Gielgud), the British aristocrat who arrives late in the story to tempt Napoleon with the offer of a return to limited power, represents the sadistic application of leverage, since he’s a callous snob. Shown in contrast to these two characters, Napoleon occupies complicated middle ground. He evaluates everyone he meets on merit, belittling the craven and embracing the bold, and yet he succumbs to avarice whenever the promise of reclaiming lost glory appears.

          Haigh captures all of those nuances well, even when Lampell’s script wanders into such discursive bits as long scenes involving Madame Bertrand (Billie Whitelaw), a companion of Napoleon’s whose relationship with the deposed monarch is never clearly articulated. Scenes with Betty Balcombe (Georgina Hale), essentially a groupie infatuated by Napoleon’s charisma, are more pointed. Ultimately, Eagle in a Cage is an odd sort of a picture, because it has the iffy production values and jumpy editing of a low-budget production even though it also has the grown-up subject matter and sophisticated dialogue of a prestige film. One can’t help but wonder if plans to recruit a leading actor of greater notoriety, perhaps Richard Burton or someone of his ilk, ran aground. Whatever the backstory, Eagle in a Cage is consistently intelligent and thoughtful, a mannered study on the afterglow of conquest, with the specter of death never far away.

Eagle in a Cage: GROOVY

Mahler (1974)

          Some Ken Russell movies are consistently restrained and most of them are consistently crazy, but Mahler falls somewhere in the middle. About half the film uses straightforward dramatic scenes to explore the life of famed composer Gustav Mahler, who lived from 1860 to 1911 and contributed significantly to the classical-music canon. Bits and pieces are tweaked for comic effect, but most of these segments occupy the known universe. And then there’s the other half of Mahler—the one with the anachronistic Nazi imagery, the outrageous ethnic stereotypes, and the shock-value sex and violence. Based on the totality of Russell’s career, one suspects that’s the part of Mahler that spoke most deeply to the filmmaker’s soul. Even though he’d gone for the cinematic jugular many times before, once the mid-’70s arrived, he seemed almost pathologically incapable of resisting puerile narrative impulses.

          The trajectory of Mahler’s conventional storyline is fairly interesting, depicting how the young composer drifted away from the anti-intellectual influence of his family by embracing lessons about the beauty of nature. As the film progresses, Mahler (played as an adult by Robert Powell) faces such familiar rigors as balancing creative endeavors with paying gigs. He also endures humiliation from those who regard him as a second-rate successor to Richard Wagner. Most troublingly, Mahler navigates a complicated marriage to Alma (Georgina Hale), whom he unwisely takes for granted even though he knows she has an extramarital suitor. Eventually, the problems of Mahler’s life coalesce in the crucial moment when he converts from Judaism for Christianity in order to secure a lucrative job.

          This material should have been sufficient, but Russell gilds the lily—and then paints the thing bright, whorish red—with ridiculous dream/fantasy sequences. In the most epic of these, which is staged like a comedic silent film complete with title cards, Mahler wears an exaggerated Jewish-intellectual costume while facing Cosima Wagner (Antonia Ellis), the powerful and deeply anti-Semitic widow of Richard Wagner. Wearing a Nazi-dominatix costume, she whips Mahler, makes him jump through flaming hoops, forces him to eat the flesh off a pig’s head, and stands atop a mountain like a Teutonic demigoddess, a gigantic sword towering behind her. Need it be said that this silly film-within-a-film is such an excessive directorial indulgence that it nearly derails the whole movie?
          At least the film-within-a-film is amusing, just like the goofy visual reference that Russell makes to the Italian art film Death in Venice (1971), which featured an all-Mahler soundtrack. Incredibly, Powell retains his dignity throughout most of this film, delivering a credible performance as a diva who learns humility. Furthermore, Hale is spirited as Alma, and it’s hard to find fault with the soundtrack, which almost exclusively comprises selections from Mahler’s magnificent oeuvre.

Mahler: FUNKY