Amadeus is a 1984 American periodbiographicaldrama film directed by Miloš Forman and adapted by Peter Shaffer from his 1979 stage play of the same name, starring F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce. Described by Shaffer as a "fantasia on [a real-life] theme", and originally inspired by Alexander Pushkin's 1830 play Mozart and Salieri, the film imagines a bitter rivalry between two of Vienna's most eminent composers of the 18th century: the supremely gifted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Hulce) and the politically connected Antonio Salieri (Abraham). Over the course of the film, Salieri struggles to reconcile his professional admiration of Mozart with his personal hatred for the man, and resolves to ruin Mozart's career to avenge himself against God.
In 1823, aged composer Antonio Salieri is committed to a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide, during which he claims that he murdered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Father Vogler, a Catholic priest, encourages Salieri to confess his sins before God. After the young Vogler fails to recognize him, Salieri plays three old melodies to jog his memory. Vogler cannot recognize the first two (which Salieri wrote), but is relieved to recognize the third (Eine kleine Nachtmusik) at once. Salieri peevishly reveals that Mozart wrote it.
Salieri begins his confession by saying that he grew up hearing stories of Mozart the child prodigy. As a youth, Salieri offered God a deal: if He allowed Salieri to become a famous musician like Mozart, Salieri would offer his faithfulness, chastity, and diligence. His unsupportive father soon dies, which Salieri interprets as a sign that God has accepted his vow. By 1774, Salieri becomes court composer to Emperor Joseph II in Vienna. However, he has enough taste to know that Emperor Joseph has no ear for music, and that his own compositions will not stand the test of time.
When Salieri meets Mozart for the first time, he immediately knows that Mozart is the better composer, but is shocked to learn that Mozart is obscene, immature, and dissolute. Adding to his dismay, he learns that Mozart never needs to pen a second draft of his music (see Mozart's compositional method), implying divine inspiration. Salieri cannot fathom why God would choose a reprobate like Mozart as His earthly instrument. Salieri renounces God and vows to take revenge on Him by destroying Mozart.
Mozart's work is ahead of its time, and he has trouble finding work in Vienna. He spends himself into debt, alarming his wife Constanze. Salieri and Mozart bond over their shared contempt for Emperor Joseph's lack of taste, but for the same reason, Mozart is unimpressed by Salieri's populist work, which causes Salieri great pain.
Mozart boldly adapts the subversive play The Marriage of Figaro into a comedic opera. Salieri rejoices, thinking Mozart's career is ruined, but Mozart stuns Salieri by convincing the Emperor to approve the project. However, to Salieri's equal disbelief, the Emperor finds the opera boring, and it is promptly cancelled. In response, Mozart composes Don Giovanni, a dark, serious opera. Salieri is entranced, but vindictively gets that opera cancelled too. Renouncing Vienna's artistic establishment, Mozart agrees to write The Magic Flute for a commoners' theater.
After watching Don Giovanni five times, Salieri realizes that the dead commander who accuses Giovanni of sin represents Mozart's inferiority complex towards his own father. He concocts a plan to humiliate God. He persuades the unstable Mozart that his late father has risen to commission a Requiem Mass. He plans to kill Mozart, claim the Requiem as his own, and premiere it at Mozart's funeral, forcing God to listen as Salieri is acclaimed. Mozart overworks himself juggling both The Magic Flute and the Requiem. Constanze, who wants him to focus on the Requiem, leaves with their son Karl. Although The Magic Flute is a success, the dying Mozart collapses before he can finish the Requiem.
Desperate to complete his plan, but also desperate for more of Mozart's heavenly music, Salieri begs the bedridden Mozart to keep writing the Requiem. He takes dictation from Mozart, during which he comes to terms with Mozart's superior talent. Mozart thanks Salieri for his friendship and Salieri admits that Mozart is the greatest composer he knows.
Constanze returns and kicks Salieri out of the apartment before he can steal the Requiem.[a] Due to his debts, Mozart is unceremoniously buried in a pauper's grave.
Back in 1823, Vogler is too shaken to absolve Salieri, who surmises that God would rather destroy His beloved Mozart than allow Salieri to share in the smallest part of Mozart's glory. As Salieri is wheeled down a hallway, he proclaims himself the patron saint of mediocrities. He loudly absolves the asylum's other patients of their inadequacies as Mozart's laughter rings in the air.
Kenneth Branagh writes in his autobiography Beginning that he was one of the finalists for the role of Mozart, but was dropped from consideration when Forman decided to make the film with an American cast.[7]Mark Hamill, who replaced Tim Curry as Mozart towards the end of the stage play's Broadway run, read with many actresses auditioning for the part of Mozart's wife Constanze. However, Forman ultimately decided not to cast him due to his association with the character of Luke Skywalker, feeling that audiences would not believe him as the composer.[8]Meg Tilly was cast as Mozart's wife Constanze, but she tore a ligament in her leg the day before shooting started.[9] She was replaced by Elizabeth Berridge. Simon Callow, who played Mozart in the original London stage production of Amadeus, was cast as Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of The Magic Flute.
Forman collaborated with American choreographer Twyla Tharp.[14]
Tom Hulce reportedly used John McEnroe's mood swings as a source of inspiration for his portrayal of Mozart's unpredictable genius. He claimed he did not find Mozart's signature laugh until he downed a bottle of whiskey.[9][15]
Reception
Critical reception
Amadeus holds a score of 89% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 154 reviews, with an average rating of 8.9/10. The site's consensus states: "Amadeus' liberties with history may rankle some, but the creative marriage of Miloš Forman and Peter Shaffer yields a divinely diabolical myth of genius and mediocrity, buoyed by inspired casting and Mozart's rapturous music."[16]
Giving the film four out of four stars, Roger Ebert acknowledged that it was one of the "riskiest gambles a filmmaker has taken in a long time", but added that "there is nothing cheap or unworthy about the approach", and ultimately concluded that it was a "magnificent film, full and tender and funny and charming".[17] Ebert later added the film to his Great Movies list.[17]Peter Travers of People magazine said that "Hulce and Abraham share a dual triumph in a film that stands as a provocative and prodigious achievement."[18]Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic put it on his list of films worth seeing.[19]
In one negative review, Todd McCarthy of Variety said that despite "great material and themes to work with, and such top talent involved," the "stature and power the work possessed onstage have been noticeably diminished" in the film adaptation.[20] The film's many historical inaccuracies have attracted criticism from music historians.[21][22]
Box office
The film grossed $52 million in the United States and Canada[2] and by November 1985, while still in theatres overseas, had grossed over $90 million worldwide to date.[3]
Accolades
The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning eight (including Best Picture). At the end of the Oscar ceremony, Laurence Olivier came on stage to present the Oscar for Best Picture. As Olivier thanked the academy for inviting him, he was already opening the envelope. Instead of announcing the nominees, he simply read, "The winner for this is Amadeus." An AMPAS official quickly went onstage to confirm the winner and signalled that all was well before Olivier then presented the award to producer Saul Zaentz. Olivier (in his 78th year) had been ill for many years, and it was because of mild dementia that he forgot to read the nominees.[23] Zaentz then thanked Olivier, saying it was an honour to receive the award from him,[24] before mentioning the other nominees in his acceptance speech: The Killing Fields, A Passage to India, Places in the Heart and A Soldier's Story. Maurice Jarre won Best Original Music Score for his scoring of A Passage to India. In his acceptance speech for the award, Jarre remarked "I was lucky Mozart was not eligible this year".[25]
The film along with The English Patient, The Hurt Locker, The Artist, and Birdman are the only Best Picture winners never to enter the weekend box office top 5 after rankings began being recorded in 1982.[26][27][28][29] The film peaked at No. 6 during its 8th weekend in theaters. Saul Zaentz produced both Amadeus and The English Patient.
From the beginning, writer Peter Shaffer and director Miloš Forman both were open about their desire to create entertaining drama only loosely based on reality, calling the work a "fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri".[44]
Another significant departure in the film is the portrayal of Salieri as a pious loner trapped in a vow of chastity when in reality he was a married family man with eight children and at least one mistress.[22]
Mozart was indeed commissioned to compose a Requiem Mass by an anonymous benefactor. In reality, the patron turned out to be Count Franz von Walsegg, who was grieving after the death of his wife.[46]
The "director's cut"
Amadeus premiered in 1984 as a PG-rated movie with a running time of 161 minutes. Director Miloš Forman later introduced an R-rated version with nearly 20 minutes of restored footage, which was released by the studios as a Director's Cut on September 24, 2002.[47] Since 2002, the Director's Cut has been the only available version of the film, as the producers modified the original film negative to include the additional footage, although the producers have promised to re-release the theatrical edition at an unspecified future date.[48]
It is not clear whether the Director's Cut represents Forman's actual artistic vision. Forman defended the 20 minutes of cuts in his 1993 autobiography Turnaround,[49] and repeated his defense in the 1995 supplemental material for Pioneer's deluxe LaserDisc. The Director's Cut has come under severe criticism, in part because it displaced the theatrical edition, instead of complementing it. Rian Johnson argued that the Director's Cut "is bizarrely a sort of inverse master class in editing: It shows exactly why the cuts were made in the first place & how they made the film work."[50]Roger Ebert noted that the cut was part of a broader wave of directors’ cuts on home video, which he characterized as a “mixed blessing."[51]The A.V. Club's Tasha Robinson noted that most of the additional sequences were either redundant or unnecessary, and broke up the "lively flow between scenes" that marked the theatrical edition's "superb[]" editing."[52]
On the other hand, critics have recognized the merits of some of the additional scenes. Ebert and Robinson agreed that the added scenes better explained Constanze's hatred for Salieri, although Robinson questioned whether that subplot actually needed a topless scene.[51][52]Foreign Policy's Jordan Hoffmann added that the subplot featuring Christine Ebersole as a Salieri-favored singer who sleeps with Mozart, was "splendid."[53]
More broadly, while promoting the Director's Cut, Forman argued that the unlimited running time of home video provided a better environment for the deleted scenes:
When you finish a film, before the first paying audience sees it, you don't have any idea. You don't know if you made a success or a flop when it comes to the box office. And in the '80s, with MTV on the scene, we are having a three-hour film about classical music, with long names and wigs and costumes. Don't forget that no major studio wanted to finance the film, for these reasons. So we said, "Well, we don't want to be pushing the audience's patience too far". Whatever was not directly connected to the plot, I just cut it out. But it was a mutual decision [to limit the running time]. I wanted the best life for the film myself... Well, once we are re-releasing it on DVD, it doesn't matter if it is two hours and 40 minutes long, or three hours long. So why don't we do the version as it was written in the script?[54]
In 2024, Saul Zaentz Co. announced that in conjunction with the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Film, it had completed a 4K restoration of Amadeus (including the theatrical cut) to celebrate the film's 40th anniversary. The restorers noted that Paul Zaentz, Saul's nephew and successor, personally preferred the theatrical edition to the director's cut. The producers announced that a restored version of the theatrical edition will be made available on home video.[48]
Music
Amadeus music performed live in-sync with the movie by an orchestra and choir at Meridian Hall in Toronto
The soundtrack album[55] reached No. 1 in the Billboard Classical Albums Chart, No. 56 in the Billboard Popular Albums Chart, has sold over 6.5 million copies and received thirteen gold discs, making it one of the most popular classical music recordings of all time.[56] It won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Album in 1984.[57]
All tracks on the album were performed specifically for the film. According to the film commentary by Forman and Schaffer, Marriner agreed to score the film if Mozart's music was completely unchanged from the original scores. Marriner did add some notes to Salieri's music that are noticeable at the beginning of the film, as Salieri begins his confession.
The aria "Ruhe sanft" from the opera Zaide does not appear in the film.
In 1985, an additional album with the title More Music from the Original Soundtrack of the Film Amadeus was issued containing further selections of music that were not included in the original soundtrack release.[71]
The Masonic Funeral Music was originally intended to play over the closing credits, but was replaced in the film by the second movement of the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor[72] (included on the Original Soundtrack Recording).
Director's Cut soundtrack
In 2002, to coincide with the release of the Director's Cut of the film, the soundtrack was remastered with 24-bit encoding and reissued with the title Special Edition: The Director's Cut – Newly Remastered Original Soundtrack Recording on two 24-karat gold CDs.[73] It contains most of the music from the previous two releases, but with the following differences.
The pink wig worn by Mozart in the movie can be seen in the permanent exhibition of the Acadian Museum at the University of Moncton. The wig was created by Paul LeBlanc. LeBlanc won an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for this movie in 1985.[75]
Notes
^A deleted scene, included in the director's cut, shows that to further humiliate Mozart before God, Salieri encouraged Constanze to offer him sexual favors in exchange for helping Mozart's career. In the end, the chaste Salieri cannot bring himself to break his vows (nor would he want to help Mozart's career). Although Constanze is partially nude at this point, Salieri calls in his attendant to show her out. The episode earns Salieri Constanze's eternal hatred. When she kicks Salieri out of the apartment at the end of the film, she bitterly remarks that she does not have a servant to evict him.
^Travers, Peter (October 1, 1984). "Screen". People. 22 (14): 14. Archived from the original on September 16, 2018. Retrieved September 16, 2018.
^Kauffmann, Stanley (October 29, 1984). "Films Worth Seeing". The New Republic. Vol. 191, no. 17. pp. 24–26. Archived from the original on February 9, 2024. Retrieved September 16, 2018.
^McCarthy, Todd (September 5, 1984). "Amadeus". Variety. Archived from the original on September 16, 2018. Retrieved September 16, 2018.
^ abBurton-Hill, Clemency (February 24, 2015). "What Amadeus gets wrong". BBC Culture. Archived from the original on April 17, 2021. Retrieved April 20, 2021.
^"European Top 100 Albums"(PDF). Eurotipsheet. Vol. 2, no. 19. May 13, 1985. p. 16. Archived(PDF) from the original on December 28, 2021. Retrieved February 3, 2022 – via World Radio History.
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