Amadeus (film)

In the winter of 1823, Antonio Salieri is committed to a psychiatric hospital after barring his doors and attempting suicide, during which his servants overhear him confess to murdering Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A young priest, Father Vogler, approaches Salieri for elaboration on the latter's confession. Salieri plays two of his own melodies; Vogler admits that he doesn't know them. Salieri then plays Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which Vogler knows perfectly well. Unsurprised that Vogler knows this melody but not his, Salieri recounts how, ever since he could remember, he desired to be a composer, much to his father's chagrin. He prays to God that if He allowed Salieri to become a famous composer, he would, in return, promise his faithfulness, chastity and diligence. Soon after, his father chokes on his food and dies, which Salieri takes as a sign that God has accepted his vow. By 1774, Salieri had become court composer to Emperor Joseph II in Vienna.

Seven years later, at a reception in honour of Mozart's patron, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Salieri anxiously awaits to meet his idol, guessing his identity. He is shocked to discover that the transcendentally talented Mozart is obscene, silly, and immature. Salieri, a devout Catholic, cannot fathom why God would endow such a great gift onto Mozart instead of him and concludes that God is using Mozart's talent to make Salieri a mediocrity. Salieri renounces God and vows to take revenge on Him by destroying Mozart.

Meanwhile, Mozart's alcoholism ruins his health, marriage, finances and reputation at court, even as he continues to produce brilliant work. Salieri hires a young girl to work as Mozart's maid (against Mozart’s father Leopold's better judgment) so he may gain access to his apartment, where he discovers that Mozart is working on an opera based on the play The Marriage of Figaro, which the Emperor has forbidden, owing to its subversive theme. When Mozart is summoned to court to explain, he manages to convince the Emperor to allow his opera to premiere, despite Salieri and the advisors' attempts at sabotage. When Mozart is informed that his father has died, he writes Don Giovanni in his grief.

Salieri recognizes the dead commander in the opera as symbolic of Mozart's father and concocts a scheme; he leads Mozart to believe that his father has risen to commission a Requiem. He then plans to kill Mozart once the piece is finished and premiere it at Mozart's funeral, claiming the work as his own. Meanwhile, Mozart's friend Emanuel Schikaneder invites him to write an opera for his theatre. Mozart obliges, despite his wife Constanze's insistence that he finish the Requiem, as the opera is a riskier venture. After arguing with Mozart, Constanze leaves with their young son, Karl.

The opera in question, The Magic Flute, is a great success, but the overworked Mozart collapses during one performance. Salieri takes him home and persuades him to continue writing the Requiem, offering to take the bedridden Mozart's dictation; the two lay down the opening of the Confutatis together. The next morning, Mozart thanks Salieri for his friendship, and Salieri admits that Mozart is the greatest composer he knows. Constanze returns and, appalled at finding Mozart working with Salieri, demands that Salieri leave immediately. In her guilt, she locks the unfinished Requiem away in a cabinet, keeping it away from both composers. Constanze and Salieri argue with each other, before she walks over to Mozart's bed to find that he has died. Mozart is taken out of the city on a rainy day and is unceremoniously buried in a mass grave.

Back in 1823, Vogler is too shaken to absolve Salieri, who surmised that the "merciful" God preferred to destroy His beloved Mozart rather than allow Salieri to share in the smallest part of his glory. Salieri promises, with bitter irony, to both pray for and absolve Vogler along with all the world's mediocrities as their "patron saint". As Salieri is wheeled down a hallway, absolving the hospital's patients of their inadequacies as he passes by, Mozart's laughter rings in the air, as a reminder of his glee for his talent.

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.

The film was shot on location in Prague[10] and Kroměříž.[11] Notably, Forman was able to shoot scenes in the Count Nostitz Theatre in Prague, where Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito debuted two centuries before.[12] Several other scenes were shot at the Barrandov Studios and Invalidovna building, former "hôtel des invalides", built in 1731–1737.[13]

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]

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".[42]

The idea of animosity between Mozart and Salieri was popularized by Alexander Pushkin in 1830 in his play Mozart and Salieri. In it, Salieri murders Mozart on stage. The play was made into the opera Mozart and Salieri by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov 67 years later,[42] which in turn had its first screen adaptation by silent-film director Victor Tourjansky in 1914.[43]

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.[44]

Amadeus premiered in 1984 as a PG-rated movie with a running time of 161 minutes. Director Miloš Forman introduced an R-rated version with nearly 20 minutes of restored footage. This version was released by the studios as a Director's Cut on September 24, 2002.[45] Forman justified why those scenes were cut in the first place in the 1995 supplemental material for Pioneer's deluxe LaserDisc. However, he explained why the scenes were eventually restored in a subsequent 2002 interview with The A.V. Club:

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?[46]

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• Amadeus at IMDb
• Amadeus at the TCM Movie Database
• Amadeus at AllMovie
• Amadeus at Rotten Tomatoes
• Amadeus at Box Office Mojo
• Analysis of Amadeus – the play and the film
• Amadeus script
• Amadeus at the American Film Institute Catalog