Cinema: Hardly Classical

MAHLER

Directed and Written by KEN RUSSELL

By this time. Ken Russell should have got sick of being told he has gone too far. But on he goes, each new movie an exercise in further excess. Mahler —which appeared in England two years ago but is only now being released in the U.S.—is a discombobulated. flatulent film that bears only a glancing resemblance to the life of the post-Romantic composer.

Russell made his initial reputation as a director with a series of subdued, en terprising biographical films for the BBC. Song of Summer, a life...