DVD Mahler on the Couch Mahler auf der Couch Austria/Germany, 2010, 97 minutes, German with English

Mahler on the Couch
Mahler auf der Couch

Austria/Germany, 2010, 97 minutes, German with English subtitles

A Film By Percy Adlon and Felix Adlon

This exuberant imagining of the real-life marriage of Gustav Mahler (Johannes Silberschneider) and his tempestuous wife Alma Schindler Mahler (the luminous Barbara Romaner) is a sensory feast of art, sex and celebrity in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Chafing under her agreement to give up her own musical ambitions, Alma seeks passion in the arms of the young, dashing architect Walter Gropius, which sends a tormented Mahler to Sigmund Freud for consultation. "Cameos" by Gustav Klimt and Max Burckhard. Moving and funny (the sessions with Freud are sly gems) the film is filled with Mahler's sublime music conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Beautifully written and directed by Percy Adlon (Bagdad Café) and his son Felix Adlon.

That it happened is fact. How it happened is fiction." - Percy & Felix Adlon

Based on a true story. August 1910. Devastated and confused by the discovery that his beloved wife Alma is having an affair with Gropius, Mahler travels to Holland to consult with Sigmund Freud, who is on vacation in Leiden. Feeling humiliated and betrayed, Mahler initially refuses the couch, but when Freud wheels a camp bed into the room, he relents. Their encounter stretches into the night as Mahler vividly recounts his seduction of Alma, the beautiful darling of Vienna's arts scene, their unexpected but passionate love affair and their eventual marital troubles. The next day, the two great men go their separate ways. Overjoyed with what he sees as his cure, Mahler travels to rejoin Alma.