Amadeus (film)


Amadeus is a 1984 American period drama film directed by Miloš Forman. Peter Shaffer adapted it from his 1979 stage play, inspired by Alexander Pushkin's 1830 play Mozart and Salieri. Shaffer described it as a "fantasia on theme", as it imagines a rivalry between two 18th-century Vienna composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. Salieri struggles to reconcile his professional admiration and jealous hatred for Mozart, and resolves to ruin Mozart's career as his form of vengeance against God.
Amadeus received its world premiere in Los Angeles on September 6, 1984. It was released by Orion Pictures thirteen days later to widespread critical acclaim and box office success, grossing over $90 million. It was nominated for 53 awards and won 40, including 8 Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. Abraham and Hulce were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, with Abraham winning. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it 53rd on its 100 Years... 100 Movies list. In 2019, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot

In 1823, aged composer Antonio Salieri attempts suicide and is committed to a psychiatric hospital. He claims that he murdered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Father Vogler, a young Catholic priest, encourages Salieri to confess his sins before God. After Vogler fails to recognize him, Salieri plays three old melodies to jog his memory. Vogler cannot recognize the first two but is relieved to recognize the third at once. Salieri peevishly reveals that Mozart wrote it.
Salieri begins his confession by saying that he grew up hearing stories of the child prodigy, Mozart. In his youth, Salieri was in love with music but was forbidden by his father from studying the craft. Salieri proposed that if God made him a famous musician like Mozart, he would give God his faithfulness, chastity, and diligence. Salieri's father soon dies, which he interprets as a sign that God has accepted his vow. By 1774, Salieri becomes court composer to Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II in Vienna. However, he has enough taste to know that Emperor Joseph has no ear for music, though Salieri prides himself on the popularity of his work.
After their first meeting, Salieri understands that Mozart is the better composer but is shocked to learn that Mozart is obscene, immature, and dissolute. He also learns that Mozart never needs to pen a second draft of his music, 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 employment 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 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. The Emperor finds the opera boring, however, and it is soon cancelled. Eventually, Mozart's father, Leopold, passes away. In response to criticisms and his grief, 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 against Constanze's wishes.
After watching Don Giovanni five times, Salieri realizes that the dead commander who accuses Giovanni of sin represents Mozart's inferiority complex towards his father. Posing as an anonymous patron, in a costume worn to a masquerade by Mozart's father, Salieri persuades the unstable and debt-ridden Mozart to accept a commission for a Requiem Mass. Salieri 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 The Magic Flute and the Requiem. Constanze, who wants him to focus on the Requiem but is fearful of his erratic behaviour, leaves with their son Karl. Although The Magic Flute is a success, the dying Mozart collapses before he can finish conducting the opera.
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 throughout the night, 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 attempts to kick Salieri out of the apartment, locking the Requiem away before he can steal it. As Salieri protests, they are shocked to discover that Mozart has died from exhaustion. Due to his debts, he is 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 Mozart's glory. As Salieri is wheeled down a hallway, he proclaims himself the patron saint of mediocrities. He absolves the asylum's other patients of their inadequacies as Mozart's laughter rings in the air.

Cast

Production

wrote 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. 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. Similar to Hamill, Forman was not interested in having Curry reprise his stage role of Mozart, but at Shaffer's suggestion, Curry screen tested for the role of Salieri.
Forman invited Hulce to a "get acquainted session" in late 1982. However, Hulce was instructed not to study conducting, as the modern discipline is different than in Mozart's time, when conductors primarily kept time and often played along at the keyboard. Meg Tilly was cast as Mozart's wife Constanze, but she tore a ligament in her leg the day before shooting started. 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.
The film was shot on location in Prague for seven months, with primary filming ending in July 1983. and in Kroměříž at Kroměříž Castle. Forman was able to shoot scenes in the Estates Theatre in Prague, where Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito debuted two centuries before. Several other scenes were shot at the Barrandov Studios and Invalidovna building, a former hôtel des invalides, built in 1731–1737.
Forman collaborated with American choreographer Twyla Tharp.
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.

Reception

Critical reception

Amadeus holds a score of 90% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 159 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."
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". Ebert later added the film to his Great Movies list. 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." Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic put it on his list of films worth seeing.
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. The film's many historical inaccuracies have attracted criticism from music historians.

Box office

The film grossed $52 million in the United States and Canada and by November 1985, while still in theatres overseas, had grossed over $90 million worldwide to date.

Accolades

The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won 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 all the nominees, he simply read, "The winner for this is Amadeus." An AMPAS official quickly went onstage to confirm the winner and signaled that all was well before Olivier then presented the award to producer Saul Zaentz. Olivier had been ill for many years, and it was because of mild dementia that he forgot to read the other nominees. Zaentz then thanked Olivier, saying it was an honor to receive the award from him, 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". It was the only occurrence in which the presenter announced the winner instead of the nominees in the ceremony, until the 96th Academy Awards.
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. The film peaked at No. 6 during its 8th weekend in theaters. Saul Zaentz produced both Amadeus and The English Patient. In 2006, Writers Guild of America West ranked its screenplay 73rd in WGA’s list of 101 Greatest Screenplays.

Historicity

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. Forman admitted that neither the play nor the film was ever "intended to be a documentary", calling the film a "fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri". The idea of animosity between Mozart and Salieri was popularized by Alexander Pushkin in his 1830 play Mozart and Salieri, where Salieri murders Mozart on stage. The play was made into the 1897 opera Mozart and Salieri by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, which in turn had its first screen adaptation by silent-film director Victor Tourjansky in 1914.
In real life, Salieri and Mozart "were in constant contact" during their years in the Vienna music scene and may even have been friends, although they were also professional rivals. The claim that Salieri killed Mozart has been generally debunked; in 1981, Harold C. Schonberg wrote that "medical men who have studied the reports of Mozart's final illness almost unanimous in saying that Mozart died of kidney failure." In 1785, Mozart and Salieri co-wrote the cantata Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, which was rediscovered many years after the film's release; Mozart scholar Ulrich Leisinger admitted that the piece was "not great". Salieri "frequently conducted Mozart's work" and gave Mozart's son music lessons after Mozart's death. In addition, Alex Ross wrote that Mozart and Salieri's relationship improved after the death of Emperor Joseph II, a supporter of Salieri. Schonberg said that "we will never know... the exact nature of the relationship between the two men."
However, the film's narrative was indirectly inspired by real-life rumors about Salieri killing Mozart. These rumors were prevalent enough that Rossini joked about them to Salieri's face when meeting the man in 1822. It was said that Salieri confessed to the murder in 1823, shortly before his death and the same year he attempted suicide, although the claim is generally dismissed as either pure rumor or "the ramblings of a man suffering from dementia", and Ignaz Moscheles wrote that Salieri personally denied the rumor to him on his hospital deathbed. In 1824, an anonymous detractor passed out leaflets at a Beethoven performance repeating this claim.
The less controversial claim—that Salieri saw Mozart as a competitor—has more historical support. In a biography published shortly after Salieri's death, which was purportedly based on Salieri's now-lost draft autobiography, Ignaz von Mosel wrote that Salieri respected Mozart, but was jealous of him. Salieri also did, in fact, criticize Mozart's dissipated lifestyle. Harold Schonberg noted that although Salieri had a reputation for being generous to composers who were down on their luck, he never helped Mozart.
Several members of the Mozart family thought that Salieri used his political clout to minimize his professional rival, including Leopold Mozart, Constanze Mozart, and possibly even Mozart himself. Constanze also boasted that Salieri rejected da Ponte's libretto for Così fan tutte, only for Mozart to turn it into a well-regarded opera. Moscheles agreed that his friend Salieri's "intrigues" had hampered Mozart's career. However, Alex Ross cautioned that "evidence for Salieri's supposed machinations against Mozart is scant" and that Mozart had a "tendency to see plots arrayed against him".
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.
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.

Director's cut

Amadeus premiered in 1984 with an MPAA rating of PG and a running time of 161 minutes. In 2002, director Miloš Forman assembled an R-rated version with nearly 20 minutes of restored footage. From 2002 to 2025, this was the only widely available release. A restoration of the version released in theaters was released in 2025.
It is not clear whether Forman's Director's Cut represents his actual artistic vision. Forman defended the 20 minutes of cuts in his 1993 autobiography Turnaround, 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 original 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." 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." 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."
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 required a scene with the character topless. Jordan Hoffmann added that the subplot featuring Christine Ebersole as a Salieri-obsessed singer who has sex with Mozart, was "splendid."
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 . 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?
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 the theatrical version of Amadeus, to celebrate the film's 40th anniversary. Restorers noted that Paul Zaentz, Saul's nephew and successor, personally preferred the Theatrical Cut to the Director's Cut. The distributors issued an Ultra-HD Blu-ray of the restored Theatrical Cut on February 25, 2025.

Music

Film credits

The soundtrack album 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. It won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Album in 1984.
  • Disc 1
  1. Mozart: Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183, 1st movement
  2. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: Stabat Mater: "Quando corpus morietur" and "Amen"
  3. Early 18th Century Gypsy Music: Bubak and Hungaricus
  4. Mozart: Serenade for Winds in B-flat major, K. 361, 3rd movement
  5. Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384, Turkish Finale
  6. Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A major, K. 201, 1st movement
  7. Mozart: Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat major, K. 365, 3rd movement
  8. Mozart: Great [Mass in C minor, K. 427], Kyrie
  9. Mozart: Symphonie Concertante in E-flat major, K. 364, 1st movement
  • Disc 2
  1. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, K. 482, 3rd movement
  2. Mozart: [The Marriage of Figaro|The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492], Act III, "Ecco la Marcia"
  3. Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492, Act IV, "Ah, tutti contenti"
  4. Mozart: Don Giovanni, K. 527, Act II, Commendatore scene
  5. Mozart: Zaide, K. 344, Aria, "Ruhe sanft"
  6. Mozart: Requiem, K. 626, Introitus
  7. Mozart: Requiem, K. 626, Dies irae
  8. Mozart: Requiem, K. 626, Rex tremendae majestatis
  9. Mozart: Requiem, K. 626, Confutatis
  10. Mozart: Requiem, K. 626, Lacrimosa
  11. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, 2nd movement
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.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

'' More Music from the Original Soundtrack''

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.
  1. Mozart: The Magic Flute, K. 620, Overture
  2. Mozart: The Magic Flute, K. 620, act 2, Queen of the Night aria
  3. Mozart: Masonic Funeral Music, K. 477
  4. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, 1st movement
  5. Antonio Salieri: Axur, re d'Ormus, Finale
  6. Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade No. 13 for Strings in G major), K. 525, 1st movement, arranged for woodwind octet by Graham Sheen
  7. Mozart: Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299, 2nd movement
  8. Mozart: Six German Dances, K. 509
  9. Giuseppe Giordani: "Caro mio ben"
  10. Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384, Chorus of the Janissaries and "Ich möchte wohl der Kaiser sein" ("Ein deutsches Kriegslied"), K. 539
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.

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. It contains most of the music from the previous two releases, but with the following differences.
The following pieces were added for this release:
The following pieces, previously released on More Music from the Original Soundtrack of the Film Amadeus, were not included:
A TV series adaptation of the original Shaffer play, called Amadeus, starring Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany was filmed in 2024 and is scheduled to air on Sky TV.
The pink wig worn by Mozart is in the permanent exhibition of the Acadian Museum at the University of Moncton. The wig was created by Paul LeBlanc, who won an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for this movie in 1985.

Works cited

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