In these days, Russell bangs our noses against the conventional cinematic notion of genius as if it were a manic affliction that landed on someone because his wife was being ill-tempered and his mistress humbly believed in him. Russell has given us big-scale biographies of Tchaikovsky and Liszt, and now he fells us with his "Mahler." (p. 119)

Mahler's character doesn't seem to have been particularly melodramatic, but Russell's film asserts that it was…. The mind of the picture is dulled and Nietzschean. There is a long scene equating Wagner and Nazism through Cosima Wagner, and including a characteristically banal sequence in which Mahler abjures Judaism by eating pig's-head and drinking milk at the same time. He seems to regret his forsaken Judaism, but there is no historical documentation for this that I can find…. Some people may hold that Russell's devil-may-care technique has enough talent to override quibbles...