“Moving and surprisingly funny…a sensual feast”
          — David Ansen

“Percy Adlon is up to old tricks in this delightful, witty, artistically vigorous and occasionally loony fantasia about Vienna's cultural elite.”
                      — Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter, June 23, 2010

Cinematography by Benedict Neuenfels (The Counterfeiters)

Music by Gustav Mahler, recorded by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Featuring Mahler’s Adagio, the first movement of the unfinished 10th symphony, the Adagietto, the fourth movement of the 5th symphony, and the “Ruhevoll,” the third movement of the 4th symphony.

Mahler on the Couch
Mahler auf der Couch

ABOUT THE FILM:

Gustav Mahler snatched Alma under the noses of Vienna’s artistic elite, but ten years of marriage and the death of one child have exacerbated the strains caused by the 19 year gap in their ages, and Mahler’s refusal to allow Alma to write music (“I need a wife, not a colleague”). While staying at a spa resort, Alma falls in love with Walter Gropius, five years her junior. Tormented, Mahler seeks advice from Sigmund Freud. The encounter of the two giants of music and psychoanalysis is bumpy, temperamental, and not without humor.

Percy Adlon, who delighted audiences with Bagdad Café and Sugarbaby, is back in rare form with Mahler on the Couch. Mahler is none other than the great turn of the century composer Gustav Mahler; the couch belongs to no less than Sigmund Freud, whom the freaked-out maestro, desperate for help, tracks down in Holland after discovering that his beloved wife Alma has had an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius. Adlon's passionate and witty film, which he co-wrote and directed with his son Felix, is a portrait of the fascinating, fevered, and doomed marriage between these two powerful partners. The headstrong Alma—played by the fiercely sensual Barbara Romaner—both worships her much older lover and chafes under his domination. Avoiding stuffy biopic conventions, Mahler on the Couch honors the complexity and humanity of both of its tormented lovers, keeping our sympathies in a constant state of flux. Both moving and surprisingly funny (the sessions with Freud are sly gems), the Adlons' sensual feast of a movie is propelled by Mahler's sublime music, conducted for the film by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

2010 | Austria/Germany | 98 min.

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY: Percy Adlon, Felix O. Adlon
PRODUCERS: Eleonore Adlon, Burkhard W.R. Ernst, Konstantin Seitz
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Benedict Neuenfels
EDITED: Jochen Kunstler
MUSIC BY: Gustav Mahler, recorded by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra
CAST: Barbara Romaner as Alma, Johannes Silberschneider as Gustav Mahler, Karl Markovics as Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Mücke as Walter Gropius, Eva Mattes as Anna Moll, Lena Stolze as Justine Mahler-Rosé, and Nina Berten as Anna von Mildenburg

WEBSITE: mahleraufdercouch.com

REVIEW: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, June 23, 2010