Bride of the Wind

The performance is nice, the plot is good , as its kinda based on true stories of artists. the movie actually tried to shows the passion n love of music , art of woman ALMA. But in the name of love or passion,, no shame? no respect? no dignity ? no honour? means Cheating /adultery is ok when comes to love or feelings? thats crap.. and in the end , when it shows in caption.. " her daughter married 5 times" . means she also had affairs n broken marriages. the curse of adultery goes to next generation , always.

and, maybe, it is enough. because it is not real easy to define, in right manner, a period and its remarkable personalities. the only problem - the portrait of Alma Mahler. too simple, almost a sketch, unfair in many scenes, reduced at the status of hunter of men. and, if you accept that, it is honest to remark than it is one of the sides of her personality. because she is, in same measure, an artist. not at the level of her well known husbands/lover but a voice in a period which remains defined by the freedom of creation. and this aspect of Alma Mahler seems be ignored in the film. but this sin is far to be impressive. only common to many filmmakers looking only to impress and to give perfect versions for a public who, in many senses, remains unknown.

The rating of others amazes me. However, I do think that one might need to be a classical movie lover, and perhaps a Mahler lover. This is a great movie, and it has everything: beauty, taste, sex, mystery and a fascinating ending with the doings of Alma's daughter. The most amazing thing is the incredible feminism of Alma for the time--a time two decades before women in the US gained their franchise. For that reason alone, it is a fascinating movie. But be warned: I hate just about every movie one can see in the houses today with people flying up walls and employing robots to do their evils. This is a thinking person's movie.

The lamest dialogue heard on the screen so far this year isn't helped by the director hiring actors so wooden that they compete with the furniture. See this movie only if you relish watching a large supporting cast of Viennese actors uncomfortably trying out their English on dialogue that a soap opera would reject.

A pretty but pretty dreadful movie full of nyah-ha-ha acting that trivializes some of the most brilliant people & movements in art & music of the 20th century. Walter Gropius (the giant of modern architecture & leader of the Bauhaus) suffers in particular from a particularly fatuous impersonation while Jonathan Pryce gives his usual petulantly effete performance as a very Bloomsbury Mahler. Worst of all is the actress who plays Alma. In no way does she convey the temperament of a woman of the epoch of Freud & Mahler to say nothing of someone on intimate terms with them. Lord knows what Kokoschka or Mahler or Gropius would have seen in this one.

The film seems to have been a history re-enactment on the life of Alma Schindler. It did not get into the details of the what, why and how of the relationships and inspirations. It basically just showed the events in her life. Maybe Sarah Wynter was not the right person for the role because she did not reveal in her role why all these men would fall for her and create greatness in her presence. Or maybe the dialog was too simplistic and things just jumped from courting to ending of the relationship without anybody knowing why it happened. Or the directing just didn't create that passion between any of the two characters for us to think that they would get together. I guess we'll never know.

I believe that this film has had very few cinema releases due to the rotten critiques it received. I saw it at a special screening in Canberra hosted by the director (with witty description of the trials and tribulations involved in its production and non-release). I saw it as an 'OK' biopic and certainly better than so much of the characterless violent drivel served up these days (this of course dates me). I think it deserved more exposure than it got - a worthy entry in the great director's portfolio ..... Remember, the critics usually get it wrong .... and they do not pay to see the films. Vienna is beautiful, Mahler's wife, Alma is a forgotten feminist hero whose story deserves telling.