"Shutter Island"

[Toblacher]

There is a Mahler mention in the recent film "Shutter Island".
 
Briefly, early in the movie two U.S. Marshals walk into a doctor's office and on the phonograph the Mahler Piano Quartet is playing.  The doctor asks them if they know what's playing and the Mark Ruffalo character says "Mahler".
 
One problem, the movie is set in 1954, and according to the Kaplan Mahler Discography, there wasn't a recording if it until the 1970s.
 
In a slight aside, I have to admit that in the forty years of collecting Mahler, I've never purchased the Quartet, probably because I don't have a great interest in chamber music, and the work is so early Mahler, that it just doesn't "seem" like Mahler at all.  That being said, would I be mistaken if I said that most of Mahler listers here would not be readily able to identify the quartet if they heard it playing? (Let alone a young cop in 1954!)

[Michael]

I probably would, but then again I love string/piano quartet stuff and love Mahler so...yeah.  LOL. 

[sbugala]

That error is funny.  I spotted another weird one from a fiction work I spotted on our sale table at our library this week. It was a novel about Ravel touring American in the late 1920's, called Ravel: A Novel. The dust jacket says he crosses paths with several musicians of the period...including Mahler! Whoops!

"A bestseller in France, Ravel is a beguiling and original evocation of the last ten years in the life of the musical genius Ravel, written by the novelist Jean Echenoz. The book opens in 1927 as Maurice Ravel - dandy, eccentric, and curmudgeon - voyages across the Atlantic aboard the luxurious ocean liner The France to begin his triumphant grand tour across the United States. Ravel travels across America, playing in grand concert halls from Boston to Chicago to California, meeting luminaries of the day including Stravinsky, Mahler, Bartok, Toscanini, Gershwin, and even Charlie Chaplin."

"Echenoz captures the folly of the era as well as its genius, concentrating both on Ravel's personal life - sartorially and socially splendid - and on his most successful compositions from 1927 to 1937. Illuminated by flashes of Echenoz's characteristically sly humor, Ravel is not just a quirky portrait of a famous musician coping with the ups and downs of his illustrious career but also a farewell to a dignified and lonely man going reluctantly into the night."--BOOK JACKET.[\quote]

[John Kim]

I remember the scenes with the music.

BTW, the film was such a bore!!!!! .

John,

[yiwufan]

This is so anal... and this thread is old....  but....  it was the Leonardo DiCaprio character that recognized the Mahler Quartet being played.

And the reason he knew it was Mahler was because when he was a soldier in WW2 he invaded/freed a concentration camp and when they found the commanding officer and killed him he was listening to this record.  And so in the current timeframe when they are interrogating the doctors, DiCaprio's character realizes that one of the doctors is German and he suspects him of being a former Nazi.  Now I just read on Wikipedia that Mahler's music was banned during the Nazi era, and since this supposed scene was to take place at the end of the war, doesn't this seem odd?  Yet another anachronism in addition to the lack of a recording existing back then?

But then again if you saw the movie it is possible that this was a clue early on to the character's mental state, although I highly doubt that the film makers were even aware of that fact and it is extremely unlikely that they intentionally placed a super obscure reference to Mahler's music being banned by Nazis yet being listened to by a concentration camp Nazi CO - a reference that even escaped members of the gustavmahlerboard.

[James Meckley]

The true anachronism—the playing of a recording before the recording existed—is a concern.

The other issue, playing a recording of music that's been "banned by the Nazis" was not a problem for me. I took it to suggest that highly-placed Nazis could and did do exactly as they pleased, despite any official bans that might be in place.

James

[Damfino]

Historical inaccuracies in movies usually bother me a lot; but Shutter Island was such an over-the-top unreal movie that for once it did not bother me.

I recognized the music when I saw the film only because that movement was included on the Eschenbach/Philly recording of the 6th. I liked its inclusion. The haunting and eerie quality of the music underscored the sequence very well, IMO.

However, the film was ultimately (IMO) one of those "surprise ending" films that do not stand up to repeat viewings. I did enjoy my one viewing of it, though.

dave

[barry guerrero]

There's a great nod towards Mahler 6 in "Educating Rita". It goes something like, "wouldn't you just die without Mahler" (with M6 playing on the stereo in the background).