Amadeus (film)

In the winter of 1823, Antonio Salieri is committed to a psychiatric hospital after surviving a suicide attempt, during which his servants overhear him confess to murdering Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The young priest Father Volger approaches Salieri for elaboration on Salieri's confession. Salieri recounts how, even in his youth in the 1760s, he desired to be a composer, much to the chagrin of his father. He prays to God that if He will make Salieri a famous composer, he will in return promise his faithfulness. Soon after, his father dies, which Salieri takes as a sign that God has accepted his vow. By 1774, Salieri has become court composer to Emperor Joseph II in Vienna. Seven years later, at a reception in honor of Mozart's patron, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Salieri is shocked to discover that the transcendentally talented Mozart is obscene and immature. Salieri, a devout Catholic, cannot fathom why God would endow such a great gift to Mozart instead of him and concludes that God is using Mozart's talent to mock Salieri's mediocrity. Salieri renounces God and vows to take revenge on Him by destroying Mozart.

Mozart's alcoholism deteriorates his health, marriage and reputation at court as he continues to produce brilliant work. Salieri hires a young girl to pose as the Mozarts' maid and discovers that Mozart is working on an opera based on the play The Marriage of Figaro, which the Emperor has forbidden. When Mozart is summoned to court to explain, he manages to convince the Emperor to allow his opera to premiere, despite Salieri and the advisers' attempts at sabotage. When Mozart is informed that his father has died, he pens 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. After arguing with Mozart, Constanze leaves with their young son, Karl.

Mozart's new opera, The Magic Flute, is a great success, but during one performance, the overworked Mozart collapses. Salieri takes him home and persuades him to continue the Requiem, offering to take the bedridden Mozart's dictation. The next morning, Mozart thanks Salieri for his friendship, and Salieri admits that Mozart is the greatest composer he knows. Constanze returns and demands that Salieri leave immediately. In her guilt, she locks the unfinished Requiem away, and Mozart dies from exhaustion. Mozart is taken out of the city and unceremoniously buried in a mass grave during a rainstorm. Back in the present day, Volger is too shocked to absolve Salieri, who surmises that the "merciful" God preferred to destroy His beloved Mozart rather than allow Salieri to share in His glory. Salieri promises, with bitter irony, to both pray for and absolve Volger along with all of the world's mediocrities as the "patron saint" of their order. As Salieri is wheeled down a hallway, absolving the hospital's patients of their own inadequacies as he passes by, Mozart's laughter rings in the air.

In his autobiography Beginning, Kenneth Branagh says 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 run of the stage play on Broadway, recalled in an interview that he read with many actresses auditioning for Mozart's wife Constanze and after the reads, Forman decided to not cast him because of his association with the character of Luke Skywalker, believing that the audience would not believe him as the composer.[8] Tom Hulce reportedly used John McEnroe's mood swings as a source of inspiration for his portrayal of Mozart's unpredictable genius.[9]

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.[13]

Forman collaborated with American choreographer Twyla Tharp.[14]

From the beginning, writer Peter Shaffer and director Milos Forman both were open about their desire to create entertaining drama only loosely based on reality, calling the work "fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri".[30]

The idea of animosity between Mozart and Salieri was popularized by Alexander Pushkin in 1830 in a play Mozart and Salieri. In it, Salieri actually murders Mozart on stage. This was made into an opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov 67 years later,[30] which in turn had its first screen adaptation by silent film director Victor Tourjansky in 1917.

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.[31]

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 in grieving after the death of his wife, not Salieri disguised as the ghost of Mozart's father.[32]

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.[33] Forman justified why those scenes were cut in the first place in the 1995 supplemental material for Pioneer's deluxe LaserDisc. However, he explains 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 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?[34]

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• Amadeus at IMDb
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• 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