The Chrysalis-Mahler Part One

(Took yesterday off for a birthday celebration. As I get more knowledgeable I am going back and noting which Mahler symphonies are used in which part of the film.)

Gustav Mahler is as great as Mozart or Bach was,  perhaps even more so. Ken's film Savage Messiah which we'll cover later was stunning but I think I love Mahler more. That is saying quite a bit as Savage Messiah is a masterpiece.  The magnitude of what Mahler's music is and who the man was is conveyed within every frame. He is not only the bridge between Romanticism and Modernism but he himself was a bridge between old world and post industrial revolution Western Europe. I almost need to wait to watch Mahler again, I don't want to be reminded that I don't live in such a beautiful world of forests, conservatories, demi glasses of chilled Gewürztraminer and cascade houses.

First things first-Georgina Hale owns as Alma Mahler. Robert Powell rules too but without Hale for him to play off of this film would not hit you as hard emotionally. Powell is a great actor, severely underrated, but he's also gifted with insanely fine and beautiful features that most women would envy (he played Christ) and an intrinsically graceful carriage. I can think of no one better to play Mahler and he makes it look easy.   There is no A List actress in Hollywood today or then, who could play this role-not Nicole Kidman. Not even Glenda Jackson or Helen Mirren. Georgina Hale is insanely sexy. She's also a natural dancer and her voice crackles simultaneously with humiliation, self confidence and passive aggression. Mahler is her film. By the end she had been so many different women: loyal wife, adulterous wife, failed artist, desolate mother, tormentor and best friend that we know Alma Mahler is real. 

Watch Alma as Mahler's shadow of death. 8:12

Ken Russell and The Female Form

Beauty mortally wounded. "Aria" Puccini's, Turandot segment featuring sumptuous British pin-up model Linzi Drew.

My take (censored) on Ken Russell's Nessun Dorma

Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson, Women in Love 1970

Ken's film direction embrace all trim female shapes. His actresses do not have one set look or body type. After being a fan of the Russ Meyer aesthetic (massive preferably natural breasts, a tiny waist and hips about ten inches wider than the waist but not wider or as wide as the chest)  I'm definitely a convert to Ken's far less rigid standards. Don't get me wrong, he has exacting preferences as all male directors do for female beauty but Ken respects the individuality of the actress's physique (as much of a tool of the trade as the voice) rather than forcing each woman into an inflexible, prescribed archetype.

Ken Russell's lead actress usually have extensive dance training (many of the extras in his films are classically trained ballerinas or move like them) and are required to dance in some capacity. Many walk, run, fight and dance naked too. And despite purposefully shooting Glenda Jackson's topless scenes when she was further along in her first pregnancy, unlike the rest of western civilization, Ken Russell does not put a premium on big breasts. Helen Mirren, though not a dancer, appears equally as gracefully as the human ascending and descending nude in "Savage Messiah" who strikes one deliciously figure flattering pose after another.

Here is a selection of Ken's beautiful actresses with links NSFW:

Michelle Phillips "Valentino" 1979

Hourglass Goddess Helen Mirren

Dorothy Tutin in a non Ken Russell film

Dorothy

Above: Tutin in a non Ken Russell film

Georgina Hale, Ken Russell perennial
Georgina Hale as Alma Mahler