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

Secrets (1971)

          A psychological drama that’s neither psychologically revelatory nor dramatically interesting, the European-made Secrets might never have reached American screens, because it’s hard to imagine U.S. viewers getting excited about 92 minutes of poorly written and sloppily filmed ennui. However, British actress Jacqueline Bisset unexpectedly transitioned from decorative starlet to full-fledged sex symbol thanks to The Deep (1977), a box-office hit that prominently featured the voluptuous Bisset wearing a wet T-shirt. Secrets, which was originally titled Adultery, features Bisset nude in one scene, so the film’s producers unleashed the film on the American market in early 1978, bogusly marketing the picture as erotica. Bisset, understandably, was not pleased. Cowritten and directed by Englishman Philip Saville, the picture stars Bisset as Jennifer Wood, a bored housewife whose husband, Allan (Robert Powell), is a failed actor reluctantly pursuing an office job. While Allan trudges through an all-day job interview, Jennifer ditches their preteen daughter, Judy (Tarka Kings). Then Jennifer wanders around a city park and mopes, eventually meeting a wealthy middle-aged man named Raoul Kramer (Per Oscarsson). He talks Jennifer into visiting his nearby home.

          Turns out Raoul is a widower, and Jennifer is a doppelganger of his dead wife. As the afternoon unfolds, Saville tediously cuts back and forth between the activities of Allan, Jennifer, and Judy. Allan fumbles the interview but flirts with his interviewer, Beatrice (Shirley Knight). Jennifer dresses up like Raoul’s dead wife and sleeps with him. Judy hangs out with a neighbor, who gives her a plant. Except for some pretentious dialogue and voiceover, that’s all that happens in Secrets, and even the heavily marketed nude scene is underwhelming. Bisset is indeed exposed and glorious, but the scene comprises tame postcoital cuddling, and it’s unpleasant to watch the 17-years-older Oscarsson manhandle Bisset. Secrets isn’t smut, but Saville’s filmmaking is so inept—and the portrayals are so trite—that the movie is deeply boring. Worse, the knowledge of how Bisset’s participation was misrepresented gives the movie a distasteful quality; what the actress undoubtedly presumed to be grown-up drama somehow morphed into lurid exploitation.

Secrets: LAME

The Asphyx (1973)

          The core idea of The Asphyx is so fascinating that it seems likely someone will eventually revisit the material, if not necessarily by mounting a direct remake then by contriving a more exciting story around the premise. Set in Victorian England, this UK horror picture—which is really more of a Poe-esque psychological drama with macabre elements—concerns a scientist preoccupied with death. More specifically, Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens) is part of a paranormal society that, while taking photographs of people as they die, stumbles across a possible means of capturing on film souls exiting bodies. Yet after Hugo inadvertently records a personal loss on a primitive move camera, he realizes that instead of the soul, he’s been making images of the asphyx of each dying individual. (A concept borrowed from old mythology, the asphyx is a personal demon arriving to claim the soul of one specific being just before the end of life, so each living thing has its own asphyx.) Through morbid experiments, Hugo determines that if he captures the asphyx of any being, then the being gains immortality. As in all genre-fiction stories about mad doctors playing god, things go poorly, with bloodshed and ironic tragedy unfolding around Hugo.

          On the plus side, The Asphyx is a handsomely mounted production, with careful costuming, detailed sets, and glossy cinematography. The movie also features several nasty moments, such as the handling of corpses, although the filmmakers almost completely avoid outright gore. Plus, as noted earlier, the asphyx notion is creepy, and the filmic representation of the asphyx—a ghostly form with a skeletal face, visible only in a beam of specially concocted blue light—has a visual kick.

          On the minus side, The Asphyx is slow and talky, a problem made worse by the cast’s stiff acting. Stephens has some fun with extreme scenes (notably the bit in which his character voluntarily electrocutes himself), though he’s a poor substitute for, say, Peter Cushing. Similarly, Asphyx director Peter Newbrook assembles scenes tidily but lacks the gusto and luridness of a proper UK horror helmer (think Freddie Francis, Roy Ward Baker, etc.). Costars Robert Powell (as the scientist’s aide) and Jane Lapotaire (as the aide’s fiancée) are even less interesting than leading man Stephens, though Powell does call to mind the eclectic modern-day British actor Richard E. Grant. The Asphyx offers a fairly intelligent alternative to the usual pulpy delights of ’70s horror, and the script—by Brian Comport, from a story by Christina and Laurence Beers—gives considerable attention to ethical/scientific/philosophical ruminations. The cost of this approach, however, is that The Asphyx feels dry and monotonous except in its biggest moments, but even then, the movie wants for actual jolts.

The Asphyx: FUNKY