Susan Granger's review of "BRIDE OF THE WIND" (Paramount Classics)
Remember Sharon Stone's character in Albert Brooks' 1999 comedy "The Muse"? She inspired writers and other cinematic creators in Hollywood. In this film, Alma Schindler assumes that role in the cultural community of early 20th-century Vienna. As played by petulant model-turned-actress Sarah Wynter ("The Sixth Day"), she's the free-spirited young wife of composer Gustav Mahler (Jonathan Pryce) whose sexual escapades were legendary. Her major lovers included painter Gustav Klimt (August Schmolzer), architect Walter Gropius (Simon Verhoeven) of the Bauhaus movement, painter Oskar Kokoschka (Vincent Perez), and novelist Franz Werfel (Gregor Seberg), whom she married after Mahler died - but she also toyed with her musical tutor Alexander Zemlinsky, singer Enrico Caruso, composer Arnold Schoenberg, and writer Gerhart Hauptmann. Australian director Bruce Beresford relies on Peter James's cinematography and Herbert Pinter's production design, including artistic costumes and elegant sets, in a valiant attempt to overcome Marilyn Levy's exposition-weighted script and soggy, repetitive dialogue in a cacophony of accents. Although her story has great dramatic potential, Alma Schindler's capricious motivations are unclear and, at best, petty and shallow. Has her own creativity been stifled because Mahler forbade her to pursue a career in composing? Is she a neurotic pre-feminist, rebelling against Gropius's desire to keep women in their place at home? Or is she simply a promiscuous adventurer, as satirized in Tom Lehrer's song "Alma," concluding "The body that reached her embalma was one that had known how to live"? On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Bride of the Wind" is a glossy but floundering 5 - far better suited to a TV mini-series.
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