Other Titles • Amadeus: The Director's Cut (1984) • Peter Shaffer's Amadeus (1984) • Peter Shaffer's Amadeus: Director's Cut (1984)
Synopses for Amadeus (1984)
1.
On a November night in 1823 a distracted old man offers from his window an appalling confession to the city of Vienna: "Forgive me, Mozart. Forgive your assassin." Moments later he attempts suicide, and is rushed through the snowy streets to the General Infirmary, a grim building containing all manner of sick and desperate patients. Some weeks afterwards, confined in a private room, he is visited by the Hospital Chaplain, Father Vogler. While obviously contemptuous of the priest, the old man is drawn to confess to him. His story, told throughout one night, forms the substance of the film.
The old man is ANTONIO SALIERI, once the most famous musician in Vienna. A small town Italian lad from Legnago, he worked his way up to becoming Court Composer to Emperor Joseph II, brother of Marie Antoinette and lover, in a limited way, of music. All his early life Salieri had been possessed by one driving desire: to serve God through music. As a boy he made a solemn vow to Him in Church, offering his chastity, his unremitting industry, and his deepest humility if God in His turn will grant him musical excellence as a composer, and immortal fame for its exercise.
At first it seems to Salieri that his offer has been accepted. He goes to Vienna and rapidly becomes the most successful musician in that city of musicians and is accepted as Court Composer. Then in 1781 a young man arrives and changes everything forever -- WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART. Already famous as a prodigy at the age of six, Mozart was toured throughout Europe by his dominating father LEOPOLD, showing off musical tricks for the amusement of the aristocracy. Now at age 26, the young man is far more than a performing monkey. He has become a composer, eager to show off his abilities. Salieri hears that Mozart is to give a concert of his music at the residence of his employer the Archbishop of Salzburg, and hurries there to hear it. That night changes his life.
Before the concert starts the Court Composer strolls through the throng of fashionable guests, striving to guess which one can be Mozart. His eye is suddenly distracted by trays of pastries being carried by servants to the buffet. He follows them, eager to steal a little private refreshment -- he is possessed of an Italian sweet tooth -- but instead encounters a giggling couple playing together on the floor like children, and rather dirty-minded children at that. Concealed from view, he is obliged to listen to an infantile scatological game played by the boy-man who is wildly attracted to the girl-woman. Salieri is scandalized by what he hears -- and then astounded as music suddenly sounds from the great salon, and the boy springs up in alarm, cries "My music" and dashes from the room. This is Mozart? This giggling, naughty figure? And worse: the music Salieri hears -- an adagio from the Wind Serenade for Thirteen Instruments -- is the most beautiful he has ever heard in his life. God is apparently favoring not him, but a sniggering, unattractive little show-off.
From this moment, Salieri's relations with his God begin to deteriorate. In the ensuing weeks he often meets Mozart, and the young man proceeds to unwittingly insult him in a variety of ways: firstly by sitting at the keyboard and turning the dull March of Welcome Salieri has composed into the brilliant tune later to be made world famous in "The Marriage of Figaro" -- Non Piu Andrai; secondly by seducing Salieri’s prize pupil KATERINA CAVALIERI, who sings the lead in the opera especially commissioned by a benevolent Emperor Joseph II. When his Majesty decides to show an additional mark of favor to Mozart by proposing him as a teacher of music to his royal niece, Salieri decides to block the appointment.
Constanze, Wolfgang's wife, appears secretly at Salieri’s house to plead for her husband, bearing with her manuscripts of his music as evidence of his ability. Salieri studies them as she waits. The manuscripts form an incredible miscellany of work -- the slow movement of the Flute and Harp Concerto; the last movement of the Concerto for Two Pianos; the Twenty-ninth Symphony; the Kyrie from the C Minor Mass. Incredibly, these original and first drafts of the music show no corrections of any kind; it is just as if Mozart has taken down dictation from God Salieri reads on, overwhelmed, he is maddened by their perfection. Mozart has been chosen to be His instrument; Salieri must remain forever mediocre, despite his longings to serve. In fury he turns on the Deity. He makes demands of Him: "Why implant the desire to serve and then withhold the talent to do it? Why bestow Your divine genius on Mozart, who is neither good nor chaste?" Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art. And for that reason he vows to ruin God’s incarnation -- Mozart -- as far as he is able.
Relentlessly Salieri plots to destroy Mozart. When "The Marriage of Figaro" comes to be produced, he does everything in his power -- largely through the Italian faction at Court -- to ruin it. Inevitably Mozart begins to sink into poverty and sickness. Finally the Court Composer discovers a real weakness in his victim’s character, through which he can destroy him not only economically but physically and mentally. Mozart's father Leopold visits Vienna to stay with his son and daughter-in-law, of whom he violently disapproves. The visit -- despite attempts to cheer it up with parties and masquerades -- is a disastrous failure, and the old man leaves for Salzburg in bitterness. Shortly thereafter he dies. Mozart is badly stricken. Salieri perceives, at a performance of the opera "Don Giovanni" that in the dreadful figure of the accusing statue, Mozart has summoned up his father to accuse him, publicly, on stage. Guilt is deeply ingrained in the son’s soul, ready to be used against him by an enemy. Surprisingly, however, Salieri's aim is not his immediate destruction.
As the life of Mozart grows more and more desperate, he lapses into sickness and drunkenness and turns from the Court which has turned from him to produce entertainment for ordinary German people in the popular theater of EMANUEL SCHIKANEDER, Salieri, his tormented persecutor, suddenly decides that he wants Mozart alive -- at least for the moment. His lust for immortality propels Salieri toward a new and pathetic wickedness. Committed to his war with his Maker, he finally hits on the one stratagem that, in his eyes, could enable him to win he battle for eternal recognition.
It''s 1781 and Antonio Salieri is the competent court composer to Emperor Joseph II. When Mozart arrives at court, Salieri is horrified to discover that the godlike musical gifts he desires for himself have been bestowed on a bawdy, impish jokester. Mad with envy, he plots to destroy Mozart by any means. Perhaps, even murder.
(87 votes)
3.
The satirical sensibilities of writer Peter Shaffer and director Milos Forman (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest) were ideally matched in this Oscar-winning movie adaptation of Shaffer's hit play about the rivalry between two composers in the court of Austrian Emperor Joseph II--official royal composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), and the younger but superior prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce). The conceit is absolutely delicious: Salieri secretly loathes Mozart's crude and bratty personality, but is astounded by the beauty of his music. That's the heart of Salieri's torment--although he's in a unique position to recognize and cultivate both Mozart's talent and career, he's also consumed with envy and insecurity in the face of such genius. That such magnificent music should come from such a vulgar little creature strikes Salieri as one of God's cruelest jokes, and it drives him insane. Amadeus creates peculiar and delightful contrasts between the impeccably re-created details of its lavish period setting and the jarring (but humorously refreshing and unstuffy) modern tone of its dialogue and performances--all of which serve to remind us that these were people before they became enshrined in historical and artistic legend. Jeffrey Jones, best-known as Ferris Bueller's principal, is particularly wonderful as the bumbling emperor (with the voice of a modern midlevel businessman). The film's eight Oscars include statuettes for Best Director Forman, Best Actor Abraham (Hulce was also nominated), Best Screenplay, and Best Picture. --Jim Emerson
(82 votes)
4.
Amadeus triumphs as gripping human drama, sumptuous period drama, glorious celebration of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart…and as the winner of eight 1984 Academy Awards, including Best Picture (produced by Saul Zaentz), Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham), Director (Milos Forman) and Adapted Screenplay (Peter Shaffer).
It's 1781 and Antonio Salieri is the competent court composer to Emperor Joseph II. When Mozart arrives at court, Salieri is horrified to discover that the godlike musical gifts he desires for himself have been bestowed on a bawdy, impish jokester. Mad with envy, he plots to destroy Mozart by any means. Perhaps, even murder.
(88 votes)
5.
A note-perfect cinematic event whose immortality was assured from its opening night, Amadeus is an unlikely candidate for the Director's Cut treatment. Like one of Mozart's operas, the multiple Oscar-winning theatrical version seemed perfectly formed from the outset--ideal casting, costumes, sets, cinematography, lighting, screenplay, music, music, music--so the reinstatement of an extra 20 minutes simply risks adding "too many notes". Yet though this extended cut can hardly be said to improve a picture that needed no improvement, it does at least flesh out a couple of small subplots and shed new light on certain key scenes.
Here we learn why Constanze Mozart bears such ill-will towards Salieri when she discovers him at her husband's deathbed: he has insulted and degraded her after she came to him for help. We also see deeper into the reasons why Mozart has no pupils: not only has Salieri poisoned the Emperor's mind against him, but the only promisingly lucrative teaching job he can find ends disastrously when he realises that the master of the house just wants music to quiet his barking dogs. In a humiliating coda to that episode, a drunk and desperate Wolfgang returns later to beg for money only to be coldly rejected. The structure of the picture is otherwise unaltered.
On the DVD:Amadeus--The Director's Cut finally accords this masterful work the DVD treatment it deserves. The handsome anamorphic widescreen picture is accompanied by a choice of Dolby 5.1 or Dolby stereo sound options, and it's all contained on one side of the disc (the original single-disc DVD release was that crime against the format, a "flipper"). Director Milos Forman and writer Peter Shaffer provide a chatty though sporadic commentary, but they're obviously still too mesmerised by the movie to do much more than offer the odd anecdote. Disc 2 contains an excellent new hour-long "making of" documentary, with contributions from Forman, Shaffer, Sir Neville Marriner and all the main actors, taking in the scriptwriting, choice of music, casting and problems involved in filming in Communist Czechoslovakia with half the crew and extras working for the Secret Police. --Mark Walker
(84 votes)
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