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Amadeus (film)

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Amadeus
Directed by Miloš Forman
Produced by Saul Zaentz
Written by Peter Shaffer
Starring F. Murray Abraham
Tom Hulce
Elizabeth Berridge
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Antonio Salieri
Distributed by Orion Pictures
Warner Bros.
Release date(s) September 19 1984
Running time 160 Min Theatrical Cut
180 Min.(Director's Cut)2002
Language English
Budget $18,000,000
IMDb profile

Amadeus is a 1984 film directed by Miloš Forman and based on the stage play Amadeus. It won eight Oscars in 1984.

The stage play was written in 1979 by Peter Shaffer, and was inspired by "Mozart and Salieri", a short play by Aleksandr Pushkin (later adapted into an opera of the same name by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov), which was in turn based loosely on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri.

Contents

[edit] Production

A young Kenneth Branagh was originally considered to play Mozart in the film, but was bypassed in favor of Tom Hulce when director Miloš Forman decided to make the film with an American cast so that audiences would not be distracted by the British accents. Meg Tilly was cast as Mozart's wife Constanze, but after tearing a ligament in her leg the day before shooting started, she was replaced by Elizabeth Berridge.

The film was shot on location in Prague and Vienna. In fact, Forman was able to shoot scenes in the Tyl Theatre, where Don Giovanni had debuted two centuries before. Several other scenes were shot at the Barrandov Studios.

[edit] Reception

The film featured F. Murray Abraham as Salieri and Tom Hulce as Mozart, as in the Broadway production, and in an Oscar rarity both would compete for the annual award for Best Actor.

The film won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Abraham for Best Actor, as well as Director (Miloš Forman), Art Direction (Patrizia von Brandenstein and Karel Cerny), Costume Design, Best Makeup, Best Sound and Adapted Screenplay (Shaffer).

Isaac Asimov praised Abraham's depiction of Salieri in his essay collection "The Relativity of Wrong", noting that he deserved to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.

There was an awkward moment on Oscar Night, as aged icon Laurence Olivier presented the evening's final Oscar for Best Picture at a ceremony held March 25, 1985, in Los Angeles. As he thanked the Academy for inviting him he was already opening the envelope, and instead of announcing the nominees, he simply read "It is Amadeus."

An Academy official quickly went onstage to confirm Olivier had correctly announced the winner, signaled that all was well and producer Saul Zaentz, in his acceptance speech, mentioned the other nominees: The Killing Fields, A Passage to India, Places in the Heart and A Soldier's Story.

Additionally, the movie was the inspiration for Falco's song "Rock Me Amadeus".

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Image:Amadeus08.jpg

Amadeus tells Mozart's story from the point of view of the court composer Antonio Salieri, who is presented as a caricature of jealous mediocrity. Salieri speaks directly to the audience at many times during the stage play, his soliloquies serving to move the timeline forward and back, and to narrate the goings on. In the film, Shaffer employs an interlocutor (a young priest) for Salieri to achieve this same function, but the story is told from a more neutral, third-person perspective and there are more scenes without Salieri in them (especially in the Director's Cut). Most of the film, and much of the play, are presented in retrospect.

At the opening of the tale, Salieri is the court composer in Vienna at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (played by Jeffrey Jones), and he has not met Mozart in person, but has heard of him and his music. He adores Mozart's compositions, and is thrilled at the chance to meet Mozart in person, during a salon at which both of their compositions will be played. When he finally does catch sight of Mozart, however, he is deeply disappointed to find that Mozart's personality does not match the grace or charm of his compositions; Mozart is crawling around on his hands and knees, engaging in an immature dialogue with Constanze Weber (who would later become his wife). As Mozart himself later explains: "I am a vulgar man. But... my music is not."

Salieri cannot reconcile Mozart's boorish behavior with the massive genius that God has inexplicably bestowed upon him. Indeed, Salieri, who has been a devout Catholic all his life, cannot believe that God would choose Mozart over him for such a gift. Salieri rejects God and vows to do everything in his power to destroy Mozart.

Throughout much of the rest of the film, Salieri masquerades as Mozart's ally to his face, while at the same time doing his utmost to destroy his reputation and any success his compositions may have. On more than one occasion it is only the direct intervention of the emperor himself that allows Mozart to continue (interventions which Salieri opposes, and then is all too happy to take credit for when Mozart assumes it was he who intervened). Salieri also humiliates Mozart's wife when she comes to Salieri for aid, and smears Mozart's character with the emperor and the court. A major theme in Amadeus is Mozart's repeated attempts to win over the aristocratic "public" with increasingly brilliant compositions, which are always frustrated either by Salieri or by the aristocracy's own inability to appreciate Mozart's genius.

The film also focuses on Mozart's relationships with his father, Leopold (whom he worships and fears), and his wife, which are rather tense and erratic respectively. As the film moves on, Mozart learns of his father's death and composes the operatic masterpiece Don Giovanni, in part as a tribute to him. Salieri avows that it was the finest opera he had ever seen, yet he uses his influence to make sure it closes after only five performances. Secretly, he attends all five.

Following this, Salieri hatches a plan to conscript Mozart to compose a requiem, after which Salieri will kill him and claim the composition as his own. Through this, he attacks what might be Mozart's only weakness, his father. Even better, he reasons, he will then perform Mozart's Requiem as "Salieri's Requiem" at the former's own funeral, thus demonstrating to the world the inspiration that his true and devoted friendship with Mozart had given him. Salieri dons a disguise - the same type Mozart's father used when they went out on Leopold's first visit to Vienna - and anonymously commissions the composition from Mozart.

Image:Amadeus07.jpg

Meanwhile, Mozart's friend Emanuel Schikaneder has put on a parody of Don Giovanni at a local music hall, which Mozart finds charming. It has also been a great success. Schikaneder convinces Mozart to write an opera "for the people", who will appreciate his work more than the staid aristocrats for whom he usually composes. Mozart agrees, and composes Die Zauberflöte, all the while continuing to work on his requiem. Zauberflöte is a big success, but during the initial performance, Mozart (who is conducting from the keyboard) falls ill and is taken home by Salieri. There, Salieri pushes Mozart to continue work on his requiem, despite the fact that Mozart is barely conscious.

At this point, Schikaneder shows up at Mozart's door, and faithfully gives Mozart's share of the opera's proceeds to Salieri, who shoos him away. Salieri then returns to Mozart and gives him the money, saying that it came from the man who commissioned the requiem, and that there will be more if Mozart can finish the piece hastily. Mozart therefore asks Salieri to assist him in completing the composition, as he is too sick to write. Salieri transcribes what Mozart tells to him, and the beauty of Mozart's Requiem is slowly revealed to the audience (and Salieri himself). After some time, Mozart pauses to thank Salieri for being such a good friend, admitting that he had always felt, deep down, that Salieri did not like his music. Touched in spite of himself, Salieri candidly replies: "I tell you, you are the greatest composer known to me." Mozart asks Salieri to stay while he sleeps a little. Salieri eventually falls asleep also.

The next morning, Mozart is near death. His wife returns to Vienna and is enraged to find Salieri there in her home with Mozart. She demands that he leave and locks the Requiem score away. After Salieri leaves, she goes to Mozart's bedside to console him. She finds him now dead.

He is buried in an unmarked mass grave, his Requiem still unfinished.

Back at the present, Salieri notes how in the years after his death, Mozart's music has endured while his has been largely forgotten. Salieri then bitterly intones to the priest, who is in tears at the end of the confession, that he is the champion of all mediocrities. An attendant then enters Salieri's room (it is now the next morning) and wheels him to the water closet. As he is wheeled through the asylum, Salieri passes other inmates and says to them, "Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you, I absolve you, I absolve you, I absolve you all."

The film ends with a close-up of Salieri closing his eyes as Mozart's bizarre laugh fills the screen signifying that he had the last laugh in their rivalry.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Film soundtrack

The original soundtrack to Amadeus reached #56 on Billboard's album charts, making it one of the most popular recordings of classical music ever. All of the tracks were composed by Mozart, save an early Hungarian folk tune and the final movement "Quando Corpus Morietur et Amen" by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, from his famous Stabat Mater. It should be noted, however, that the film features some music that is not included on the original soundtrack album release. As stated above, except where specified, all tracks were performed by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner, and all were performed specifically for use in the film.

Disc One:

Disc Two:

Music featured in the film but not included on the soundtrack album:

  • The Magic Flute; Der Hölle Rache (Queen of the night Aria), Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen... (Papageno), and Pa-pa-gena! … Pa-pa-geno! (Papageno and Papagena) (Mozart)

[edit] External links

Academy Award for Best Picture: Winners (1981–2000)

1981: Chariots of Fire | 1982: Gandhi | 1983: Terms of Endearment | 1984: Amadeus | 1985: Out of Africa | 1986: Platoon | 1987: The Last Emperor | 1988: Rain Man | 1989: Driving Miss Daisy | 1990: Dances with Wolves | 1991:  The Silence of the Lambs | 1992: Unforgiven | 1993: Schindler's List | 1994: Forrest Gump | 1995: Braveheart | 1996:  The English Patient | 1997: Titanic | 1998: Shakespeare in Love | 1999: American Beauty | 2000: Gladiator


 

v • d • e</span> 

Miloš Forman's Films
Black Peter (1964)• Loves of a Blonde (1965)• The Firemen's Ball (1967)• Taking Off (1971)• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)• Hair (1979)• Ragtime (1981)• Amadeus (1984)• Valmont (1989)• The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)• Man on the Moon (1999) • Goya's Ghosts (2006)• Amarillo Slim
Shorts: Audition (1963)• Kdyby ty muziky nebyly (1963)
Co-Director: Laterna magika II (1960)• Dobře placená procházka (TV) (1966) I Miss Sonia Henie (1971)• Vision of Eight (1973)•
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