ALMA & OSKAR

Austria, 2022, 88 minutes, Colour.

Emily Cox, Valentin Posatimayr, Tatiana Pauhofova, Anton von Lucke, Mehmet Atesci, Marcello De Nardo.

Directed by Dieter Berner.

Alma was the wife and then the widow of genius music conductor and composer, Gustav Mahler. There are some scenes between the two, in the US, preparing for performances, her comments, their interactions, his self preoccupation, her concern about her own life in society. And he dies.

With her society background, Alma moves in cultured circles, with artists, with architect Walter Gropius, with conductor Bruno Walter, with agents, her American confidante… The film recreates all this atmosphere, focusing on the quite will for Alma and her life, relationship with her daughter, partners in companionship’s.

But, as the focus of the title suggests, it is the temperamental connection with the fastest, Oscar, with whom she has a relationship, tempestuous, in the meantime having a relationship also with Gropius and organising were no water to conduct performances of Mahler Symphony.

And Oskar is an extraordinarily eccentric character, poet, dramatist, painter, intense. The relationship with Alma has significant ups and downs, temperamental interchanges. However, towards the end of the film, Oskar’s involvement in service in World War I and his experiences presenting them in a more human and humane way.

And, they both lived for a long time, Alma until the 1950s and Oskar into his 80s.

In many ways, this film is a curiosity piece.

1. Audience awareness of Gustav Mahler, his career, musical genius? His marriage to Alma, their daughter? Her ambitions, relationships, challenge to Marlow, his death? Her other relationships, with Walter Gropius, with Oskar Kokoschka?
2. The period setting, 1911, New York City, music and concerts? The Berlin setting is with Walter Gropius? The Vienna settings, with Oskar, with the Crown Prince, concerts, art exhibitions? Austrian society? The outbreak of the war, war sequences, hospitals?
3. The musical score, the music of Mahler, Alma and her compositions? Her piano performances, Debussy…?
4. Period, costumes and decor, prewar, lavish, society? Homes and studios, concert halls? Hospitals? Nursing staff?
5. The portrait of Alma, age 31, the affair with Gropius, Mahler preoccupied with his music, Gropius’s letter and Mahler reading it, upset, Alma and her accusations, his preoccupations? Their daughter? Her talk of divorce? His death, and this death mask, the encounter with Oskar, strange and eerie?
6. Alma and Mahler’s death, the Ninth Symphony, her presence of rehearsals, her skill, advice in conducting, noting the performance, with the Crown Prince, seeking out Bruno Walter, the rehearsals, the final performance, Oskar and the kimono and his entrance, the aftermath, being excluded from the Crown Prince’s party?
7. Oskar and his paintings, the performance of his play, men and women, heroics, the performance, the bodies, the dancing, the branding and the police raid? Alma and her intrigue, posing, his portraits, her absence and the substitute and his destroying the painting that paid for, the painting of them together? The final wall painting, Ride in the Wind? Character, obsessive, intensity of passion, the sexual relationship, the swim, Alma’s response? Her absences, his disillusionment, going to confront her, with Gropius and his mother, going to the war, his injuries, in the hospital, his commissioning the doll modelled on Alma? The performance of his play, Alma’s presence, seeing the doll and leaving? The information that they corresponded until her death, his dying in 1980?
8. Alma, passionate, erratic, ambitious, the relationship with Mahler, preserving his memory, who work for his Ninth Symphony, the relationship with Gropius, living with him, his mother? His theories about men and space and creativity, contrast with women? Marriage, divorce? Her relationship with Oskar, passionate, her controlling, the sexual encounters, the paintings? Her friendship with Liesel, Liesel and her financial support, ever present? Her abandoning Oskar? Her subsequent history, marriage to Franz Wergel, her death in 1964?
9. Liesel, America, financial support, her sexual orientation, friendship, always present, with Bruno Walter, Gropius, the performances? The symbolic walk along the beach with Alma?
10. The music world, conductors, Alma instructing the conductor and conducting the orchestra, seeking out Bruno Walter, working with him, discussing the performance? The achievement?
11. Oskar, his agent, the meetings in the bar, the commissions, his visiting during the war? Encouraging his work?
12. World War I, the end of the 19^th century, the beginning of a new century, art and experimentation, music?