Cheap Bride of the Wind (DVD) (Sarah Wynter, Vincent Perez) (Bruce Beresford) Price

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Customer Reviews of Bride of the Wind

Sarah Wynter, a very pretty Australian actress is cast as Alma. She wears some beautiful clothes but her acting is wooden. Perhaps it is the script, but she never came across as real. In fact, the real Alma became a well-known sculptor and did compose some minor works, but some of the dialogs about her ambitions seem a little too politically correct for their time and place. And the film was more about the men in her life than it was about her own accomplishments. Jonathan Pryce, cast as Gustav Mahler, does a fine job as the older husband who adores his young wife, mourns the death of one of their daughters, and composes brilliant music. The score contains a lot of Mahler's music, which should satisfy the music lovers.

The best part of the film, however, is the costumes and the sense of Austria prior to WWI. It's a festive and joyful place, full of music and art and parties and beautiful clothes. I got a sense of the place in a very real way. Too bad the characters were one-dimensional and belonged in a soap opera. The romances, while sometimes quite steamy, never quite seemed real. I can only give this film a lukewarm rating. It was pleasant, and nice to look at. And I did get a sense of a little bit of history. But you won't be missing anything if you don't see it.

A brief summary of her love life
This is a very enjoyable movie. It doesn't delve deeply into Alma's life and there are a few historical inaccuracies. For example, the movie shows Gustav Mahler conducting his Symphony No. 8 and inserts text saying it was in 1910 at Carnegie Hall in New York City -- that is incorrect; Mahler gave the premier performance of his Symphony No. 8 in Munich, not New York City. So, the historical research behind this movie, while generally okay, is superficial. But it is a movie and much of what it says about her relatioships with these geniuses is accurate. I would have preferred the sound track to more accurately convey Mahler's music rather than the serious editing and watering down that was done here to supposedly fit more as background sound. But I did very much like the way Mahler's Adagietto from his 5th Symphony was used as background to the Mahler/Gropius/Alma scene where Alma was forced to choose between Gustav and Gropius -- very poignant. I recommend this movie, though keeping in mind that some of what is presented is not that accurate.

Ordinary People?
Filmmakers who attempt biopics -- lives of the great and near-great -- face a daunting task. Great creative souls are not like you and me. Their lives are usually filled with the kind of ambition, arrogance, dedication to art (and themselves), and personal tics that make them poor dinner companions. But anyone setting out to make a movie -- an inherently popular medium -- will soon feel pressured to fashion characters with whom we can sympathize, even identify. Hence the weaknesses in "Bride of the Wind."

Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel either married, or had affairs with, half the great creative men of early 20c. Vienna (thank you, Tom Lehrer!) What did she have that they all wanted? To find out, you'll have to look elsewhere. This film's Alma never reveals the passion, intelligence, and wit that got her Gustav and Walter and Franz. Instead, the movie implies that she gets Mahler interested in her by making a few insulting (and shallow) remarks about his music. When their relationship begins to cool, it's because, among other things, he's been forgetting her birthday.

Mahler himself comes off as an odd combination of diffidence and arrogance; onscreen he displays little of the legendary manic energy and hyperemotive behavior that made his performances at the Court Opera seem revolutionary. I guess the director wanted to stress, in conventional screenplay terms, that he was an Older Man. Even the music he conducts onscreen is taken at a geriatric pace, slower than any of the great recordings of those scores.

Things pick up once Alma moves on to Gropius, and especially when she takes up with Kokoschka and Werfel. Yet a kind of dusty solemnity continues to hang over the proceedings, aided by the beautiful but underlit settings and some very pedestrian dialogue. Renee Fleming fans will enjoy the last scene, and so will folks who enjoy parodies of "American Graffiti."

For music aficionados only: The guy with the bald head in several scenes is Arnold Schoenberg, a genius whose wildly unconventional music helped form the basis of 20c. classical style. Unless I fell asleep (and I may have), he doesn't get to utter a single word. I consider that symptomatic of the whole movie's effort to turn these tortured souls into Ordinary People.