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| Bride of the Wind | 
 enlarge | Director: Bruce Beresford
Actors: Sarah Wynter, Jonathan Pryce, Vincent Perez, Simon Verhoeven, Gregor Seberg
Studio: Paramount
Category: DVD
Buy Used: $20.89
New (4) Used (13) from $20.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 57893
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Subtitled), English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 99
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
UPC: 097363394648
EAN: 0097363394648
ASIN: B00005Q2YS
Theatrical Release Date: 2001
Release Date: November 13, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Former rental in great condition!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Gustav Mahler's Jewishness becomes an insult, an imprication June 17, 2008
Welcome to the life of Alma Mahler, literally enslaved by Gustav Mahler who did not realize it, but Alma could not cope with it, just submit and suffer. Then she had a passion for Walter Gropius with whom she will eventually marry but the passion will vanish as soon as the wedding will be consumed, or nearly. She will have some liaison with Oskar Kokoschka, before and after Gropius, but that will only lead to drama, even melodrama. Finally she will fall for Franz Werfel who did not come out of the drabness of the setting too much and more or less kept up with appearances. Alma Mahler may have had some potential but we will never know. She never really performed as a performer, a pianist it could have been, and it is not some seven or so songs published quite later that can tell us what she could have done in music if she had not been stifled by the fame of her husband and then the grandiose vision of her next two men. But the film does not show well enough how she was the real inspirer of Gustav Mahler, the woman who gave him the courage to renege his religion to capture the director's position at the Vienna opera. He will never survive this killing of not only his God, but of God altogether, and when he found out he had killed God he discovered in the wake of this realization that life was dead and that death had invaded life completely and that only the earth was left, the earth on which we tread before being buried in it. Earth the perpetual and eternal shroud. The death of their younger daughter, Maria, was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. He had to accept the call from the earth, from death and go into total darkness now the gate of light that does not cast a shadow was dead, had been killed along with God. That feeling of death, of absolute voidness and vacuum in the world, is so Jewish and yet so beyond Jewishness. That's probably what Alma could not stand up to, the constant contact with death that is so typical of Mahler's music. And now we have re-discovered the music of the Old testament, the Hebraic music codified and organized by King David, we can compare and we can discover its main accents are the same as some of the darkest music pieces Gustav Mahler composed. His wife was just fascinated by this morbidity she felt in the music and could not identify, and that fascination became a sense of duty after she had fallen into the snare and then, when the snare released her, she could never free herself from that call from the bottom of the grave of life itself. This particular film sets the emphasis on the fragile uncertainty of Alma's successive passions that lead to some kind of melodramatic approach and that does not satisfy my real curiosity and consciousness about this world in which Mahler committed the worst crime possible, to kill his own people's God. And God knows history was going to make his people pay for that assassination, which was not only Gustav Mahler's. Maybe it was a crime committed by a whole civilization and imposed in a cathartic way onto the Jews by this civilization turned materialistic.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
 at least Tom Lehrer had wit . . . October 5, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This film is nice to look at and has a nice score. All in all, the production values - the set design, the costuming, the score - are wonderful.
But - the script is poorly written; it seems as though the author found a collection of quotes by the various characters, and then set out to write a movie about Alma, casting her as a victim.
But Alma was no victim - she was beautiful, intelligent, and in possession of an innate ability to attract men of the highest caliber - and she wasn't afraid to use it.
Ms. Wynter completely fails to capture the wit and intelligence of Alma, and as a result, she comes off more like a fin du siecle version of Paris Hilton.
Will someone please take the sets and costuming of this film, and give us a movie which shows us the real Alma - not this wimpy, self-pitying emotional midget.
I enjoyed it. June 15, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Based on actual facts, people and places around Alma Mahler. This film does make you feel back in that era. It has great photography and good direction. The love scenes are steamy but not pornographic (you don't want kids around when you are watching this movie). The occasional car on the streets, the beautiful costumes of different eras... Whether the actors portrayed accurately the real people, I don't know, I never met Gustav or Alma. I wish I had... All I have is their letters, pictures and music to try to understand them. It seems like if it was today, Alma would be surrounded by paparazzi. I know Hollywood is Hollywood, who rents a movie to search for historical facts? This movie satisfied my curiosity. So in general, if you like Victorian themes, people and music, you will like this film. An appearance by Renee Fleming was a very nice touch. I also have the soundtrack CD which I love; it contains music by Mahler, songs by Alma and some of the movie score.
The Quintessential Flirt April 7, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
"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 July 12, 2005
1 out of 18 found this review helpful
A great movie, about a great women, who inspired 4 men into their own greatness.
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