Revisiting Amadeus
The classic film still packs an emotional punch
Charlotte Smith 12:51pm GMT 22nd March 2010
The other night as I was flicking aimlessly through television channels I happened upon one of my favourite films of all time, Milos Forman’s Amadeus. The film has been referenced in Gramophone regularly of late by our former – and much missed - columnist Simon Callow (well, he did star in it after all…), so I decided to refresh my memory.
Now I know that there have been various criticisms levelled at this film throughout the years – the gross licence taken with historical fact, Tom Hulce’s broad American accent (though if you wanted strict accuracy then the language would be German), Constanze’s insistence on calling Mozart “Wolfy”…
Yet there is no denying the reverence with which it treats Mozart’s music. As a tool for convincing those new to the composer of his skill and musical sincerity, you can’t beat this film. The musical excerpts have been expertly chosen and are deftly performed by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields – indeed so convincing are these interpretations that to this day I find it difficult to listen to other versions of the Requiem. I vividly remember the first time I watched Amadeus and how easily it transformed my attitude to Mozart’s music. As a young violin student, I had always had a difficult relationship with the composer – the purity of his music requires such precision and delicateness of touch, and because of these challenges I would avoid it at all costs. But this film convinced me that it was definitely worth the effort to overcome such hurdles.
Add to this, there is no denying the brilliance of the acting (especially from F Murray Abraham as Salieri and Jeffrey Jones as Emperor Joseph II), the juiciness of Peter Shaffer’s script and the perfect pacing of the storytelling.
And here’s where I took issue with my recent viewing experience. For this was Amadeus with a difference – not the original theatrical version, but the director’s cut. The added sections – and they were numerous – did to my mind interrupt the flow of the film, robbing it to some extent of its sparkle and dexterity.
But more than this, the additional material affected the tone too. Salieri in the director’s cut is a much darker proposition, scheming to undo the poor unsuspecting Mozart in active and unsavoury ways. To be robbed so completely of my hero of “mediocrity” was disconcerting - and more so, when upon searching for Amadeus on Amazon, I discovered the director’s cut is much more readily available than the theatrical version. On BluRay it is the only option.
Still, I suppose none of this really affects the musical experience, which was just as rich as I remembered. Some might say that Amadeus denies its audience the emotional and intellectual journey of the complete work. That it’s like reading the crib notes to an entire oeuvre. But the sensation of being bombarded with one perfect melody after another is a powerful one, and surely this is valid too.
Comments
Definitely a classic. Any movie that can be so historically inaccurate and yet convey the spirit of it's subject is an remarkable achievement (I can't really think of any others). The recreations of the operatic performances in particular were meticulously researched and give a tremendous sense of the world into which these masterworks were born. Plus if you get referenced by Family Guy in a less than puerile manner, you must be doing something right - "Play Peter Griffin!"
Poor Salieri though - I doubt his reputation will ever recover, despite Cecilia Bartoli's best efforts. I have to admit I prefer the Director's Cut. The extra material gives the movie a more epic sense - Salieri as the antihero is an appealing idea, but I don't know if that was Shaffer's or Forman's intent. Every great movie needs it's villain.
Great blog though, reminds me to go watch one of the great 20th century movies.
Strangely enough I watched the Director's Cut of Amadeus last night on DVD, and I hadn't seen it before - or the original.
The American accents and terminology can grate, but they can also be quite revelatory. For me one of the most striking features of the film is how it deals with The Magic Flute - referred to as 'the vaudeville' and depicted as an obvious stylistic departure for Mozart. If anything, it drove home just how different the footing and purpose of Flute is next to the composer's other stage works and how different its audience was (and how Mozart revelled in that). These things are largely factually accurate.
And...there's that wonderful scene when Mozart first arrives in Vienna and improvises on a Salieri theme at the keyboard - it references the fact that Figaro is brewing in his mind as his variations slide into an aria we no know from that opera. Is it me, or do you simply not get this kind of detail from straight-to-hollywood flics?
I love Richard Stilwell's baritone in this movie.
I just can't get passed the crazy way Mozart behaves in Amadeus and the historical inaccuracies. I have almost all of Mozart's works in my collection of CDs, DVDs and Blue Rays so I do not have to see or hear them in this absurd film. I know I am in a minority with this opinion but so be it. However, I do respect other opinions.
Amadeus surely entertains (as Poulenc said, music is entertainment), but it enlightens, too. It is, after all, not a scholarly dissertation. Thank you for your perspective - I enjoyed reading it.
Unfortunately, besides the historical and/or psychological "licentia poetica", which is OK, there is also one very serious, musical mistake, which is not, since it makes us suspect the authors themselves didn't know very well what they were talking about.
It concerns the infamous "ballet scene" from Figaro, where Shaffer and Forman simply used the wrong musical excerpt, turning the whole sequence into nonsense.
I was visiting England in 1985 and had a spare afternoon on my own in central London. So I went to see the new film Amadeus on my own. The matinee show was almost totally deserted, save for two elderly gentlemen just below me in the front of the circle.
I had always assumed and believed that the greatest composer of all time was Beethoven. Like many others I also revered Mozart, but he was definitely only No. 2 in my personal pantheon. I only had a couple of Mozart LPs. So I was completely blown away by the sheer power and strength of the film, seeing Mozart and his music in an entirely new light. To criticize the film for its historical inaccuracies is, I believe, just as wrong as to criticize Shakespeare’s treatment of Richard III for its portrayal of the monarch as a twisted beast. That is not the point. The effect of Amadeus the movie was to push Mozart into the numero uno position in the world of classical music, probably for the rest of time. At the end of the film, I could not get up and walk away: I had to watch the credits in the track-out. The credits were timed to run around nine minutes (!), long enough for the playing in full of the second movement of the 20th piano concerto. Then the screen went blank and curtains were drawn, and I sat there with tears in my eyes. The two old men had also stayed on and were as deeply affected as I. We all three left in silence, each of us deep in our own thoughts and contemplations. It is a memory I shall always carry with me.
Yes, the music was gorgeously recorded by ASMF, but in my view the movie is not primarily about Mozart. Salieri's voice is the first we hear, Salieri's face is the first and the last on the screen, and everything we see of Mozart in the film is distorted by Salieri's poisonous envy. Salieri is an extremely refined man, so in his mind's eye Mozart has to be the opposite: a buffoon, an ape, an ass. How better to underline Mozart's perceived crudeness than to give him (and his cunning spouse) the lowest sort of American accent? Much as he dominates the action, Mozart is not the subject of this film... he's the gimmick, like a sadistic joke the creator plays on Salieri. The latter has slaved all his life to realize his ideal of musical savoire faire, and now he has to deal with a composer who is so much greater than him just by raw talent. Salieri plots against his rival, and when Mozart is gone, Salieri has to cope with the fact that even a dead Mozart is better than a living Salieri. He goes mad and tries to kill himself. At the end, where Salieri is presented as king or perhaps Pope of the crazies, we hear Tom Hulce's wonderful manic laughter. Where does it come from? Does Salieri imagine it? Does Mozart's ghost haunt Salieri? Is God laughing? Is the laughter at Salieri or with him? That kind of ambiguity makes great literature. But to truly get this film, you must see that Salieri is the true subject, and that the important action is inside his head.
I loved this movie upon first viewing and it still holds up well today. The scene where Mozart dictates his composition to Salieri from his sickbed (while the corresponding portions of the piece form the background score) was worth the price of admission then and still thrills me. I can't think of a biographical film that is wholly accurate - the director has just two hours to capture the essence of the character and his life; it is enough to give us the sense of the person. Look at the famed WWII war movie "Pattton"; it was far from accurate but it gave us the measure of the man. So did "Amadeus". Its a movie afterall. And "Amadeus" is a very good movie!
Surely "Amadeus" is really an exploration of the nature of "Genius", using Mozart as the ultimate representation of all the paradoxes of that condition, rather than a biopic? Shaffer's device of viewing him through the eyes of Salieri is a masterstroke of insight in itself. The fact that the movie takes on this complex exploration and manages to present Mozart's music in an extremely powerful way - all this within the framework of a Hollywood blockbuster - surely outweighs qualms about American accents and historical inaccuracies such as they are.
Imagine Shakespeare treated in the same way - or Wagner seen through the eyes of Hans von Bulow... I am alternately excited and appalled by the prospect, but I think it makes one appreciate just how good "Amadeus" really is.
I can only repeat, after reading all of the above comments, that Amadeus makes Mozart an idiot savant. Music, a genius, everything else, an idiot. I shall go back now to the great Mozart music I have been playing today so thank you everything for the Mozart reminder. Cheers!!
Thank you Messrs. jesserj and PKaminski for bringing some reality to the discussion. Frankly I find Amadeus on a par with making, say, the Story of Babe Ruth with a hockey puck in place of a baseball, or a world cup with Beckham bending a frisbee. While the soundtrack might have introduced many to a love of Mozart's product, I prefer the honesty of a fantasy like Fantasia to introduce people to a listening experience. It is deplorable that writers feel free to denigrate genius, distort personalities, and build a lie in the name of entertainment, even if the entertainment titillates the viewers. What would this crew do with Chopin -- have him play a toy piano a la Schroeder?
Actually, they did make a film of Chopin's life starring Cornel Wilde (?) and it was terrible except, of course, the music was great. Also, Beethoven, Schumann and Liszt, all pretty much mediocre. However, they were entertaining except if you want the truth, read a book about them.
The relationship between Mozart and Salieri worked brilliantly in the original stage play, which I saw many years ago, and in the BBC Radio 4 version with Felicity Kendal as a charming Constanza. When it became a Hollywood project, some of the fine detail of this relationship, between the guttersnipe touched by God and the devout composer who laboured long but never rose abiove mediocrity, simply disappeared. Yes, we heard more of Mozart's music, and there's no doubt that Charlotte and tonyorman are right to decribe this as a gain. However, the sharp focus of the original was lost with the screen's gorgeous spectacle of a recreated Vienna, and Forman's decision to broaden some of the comedy. For this reason, I greatly prefer Shaffer's stage original and hear it far more often than I watch 'Amadeus'.
This is actually one of my favorite films, and not just because it deals with classical music. The sheer fun and excitement of the characters, dialogue costumes, and backdrops make it a very enjoyable experience.
The film is meant to be light-hearted and accessible. A sober and infallibly accurate lionization of Mozart's talents wouldn't nearly have been as interesting or entertaining as this tongue-in-cheek spectacle. Yet this wry and witty Hollywood film also manages to generate interest and reverence in its audience, despite its portrayal of Mozart as a capricious, nauseating wastrel.
I think I'll have to watch the film again as well!
Sebastian-
http://www.favorite-classical-composers.com
I absolutely love mozart piano music so I am very excited to see this movie!
Mozart really sounds amazing in my room now. All thanks to you.
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