Bride of the Wind

Customer Reviews:

Absolutely a great film........2007-06-16

Based on actual facts, people and places, it does make you feel back in that era. It has great photography. Great acting. Pryce was believable as Mahler. The love scenes are steamy but not pornographic (you don't want kids around). The occasional car on the streets, the beautiful customs of different eras... I am an architect, I admire Gropius, Wright and Tange; I am also a classic music lover, Liszt, Beethoven, Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Mozart; My favorite painting movement is the impressionism, Sargent, Kahlo, Cassat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas; I love Victorian themes and people, Houdini, Barrie, Graham Bell, Curie. Alma's life was surrounded by a lot of this and her story is now part of my favorite themes.

The Quintessential Flirt.......2006-04-07

"Bride of the Wind" is a very appropriate description of Alma Schindler Mahler, the wife of Gustav Mahler. Like the wind, Alma was really never able to settle down, always moving from one man to another.

This breathtakingly beautiful and consummately coquettish woman was married to: Gustav Mahler, the composer, Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus architect, and Franz Werfel, the novelist. Between and during these marriages, she found time for many real and rumored affairs with such artists as Gustav Klimt, Alexander Zemlinsky, Oskar Kokoschka, and many others.

A fascinating life, to be sure, and a perfect subject for a movie. And now, the pluses and minuses:

Negative:

It appears that an over-zealous militant feminist has tried to turn Alma the playboy or playgirl of Vienna into a victim. They portray Gustav Mahler as crushing Alma's artistic creativity, and stifling her advancement as a composer. True--Mahler warned her that she would be marrying a man for whom Music came first--unfortunately even ahead of his wife. But knowing this, she still eagerly married him. The sad facts of history are that, as a composer, she really wasn't very good. She wrote many songs, some sonatas and other musical works, but they simply were not remarkable. Her teacher Zemlinsky told her so, and she admitted it herself numerous times in her diaries.

Positive:

The scenery, costumes, and acting are beautiful and excellent. Sarah Wynter is stunningly attractive, which helps demonstrate why so many famous men were attracted to Alma.

Some might argue that Wynter (Alma) just walks through the story as each new lover takes his turn in trying to win her. Yet that is essentially what Alma Mahler's life was really like. Every man who met her couldn't resist her. She enjoyed being the quintessential flirt, and she was great at it!

If she never acheived her own artistic possibilities, perhaps it was because she was too occupied with falling in love.

a Caution: (or maybe this is another positive) There are some steamy love scenes and some nudity, but they do all seem appropriate.

Bride of the Wind.......2005-07-12

A great movie, about a great women, who inspired 4 men into their own greatness.

Alma Superstar -- Not!.......2005-06-07

This biopic of Alma Mahler, the IT girl of turn-of-the-century Vienna, eagerly runs to embrace every pitfall known to the genre, and in the process, manages to invent a few new ones. Dialogue full of interminable, moronic name-dropping ("Alma, meet Franz Werfel.")? Check. Endless parade of lifeless dialogue scenes lumbering through beautiful rooms? Check. Passionate heroine who inspires the hero (or a multitude of 'em, in this case) to invent that serum/write that symphony/paint that masterpiece? Check. Nude romps on the Beautyrest to the accompaniment of some potted version of classical music? Check. Frequent dialogue updates to ground us in history ("The Archduke's been shot in Sarajevo! By TERRORISTS!!")? Check. And in the center of all this ennui plods Sarah Wynter, a pretty, unremarkable Australian actress, giving a pretty unremarkable performance here as Alma. Dead center center of every scene, she changes hairstyles and dresses, but never expressions. Too old at the beginning of the film, too young at the end, and not satisfactory in the middle. Were the real Alma this boring, she'd never have made it past her neighborhood coffeehouse. The usually reliable director Bruce Beresford comes a real cropper here.

A brief summary of her love life.......2004-01-03

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.

Average customer rating:

Dark Wind Woods/My Dying Bride

Manufacturer: CustomFlix
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000N2HB8Y
Release Date: 2007-01-30

Description

Dark Wind Woods a creepy Black And White short about a haunted wooded area that will creep you out hours after watching.My Dying Bride is another short of what nightmares are made of

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