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Theatrical release poster by <a href="/content/Peter_S%C3%ADs" style="color:blue">Peter Sís</a>
Theatrical release poster by Peter Sís

Amadeus is a 1984 American period drama film directed by Miloš Forman and adapted by Peter Shaffer from his stage play Amadeus. The story is set in Vienna, Austria during the latter half of the 18th century, and is a fictionalized biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart's music is heard extensively in the soundtrack of the film. The film follows a fictional rivalry between Mozart and Italian composer Antonio Salieri at the court of Emperor Joseph II.

Considered one of the best films of all time, Amadeus was nominated for 53 awards and received 40, including eight Academy Awards (as well as the Academy Award for Best Picture), four BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and a Directors Guild of America award. As of 2019, it is the most recent film to have more than one nomination in the Academy Award for Best Actor category. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it 53rd on its 100 Years... 100 Movies list.

Plot

An elderly Antonio Salieri confesses to the murder of his former colleague, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and attempts to kill himself by slitting his throat. Two servants take him to a mental asylum where a priest, Father Vogler, implores him to confess.

Salieri recounts how, even in his youth, 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. He is educated in Vienna and becomes court composer to Emperor Joseph II.

Mozart arrives in Vienna to perform at the request of his employer, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Salieri attends the performance to meet Mozart and, despite Mozart's obscenity and immaturity, finds his talent to be transcendent.

The Emperor desires to commission Mozart to write an opera and, despite the reservations of his advisers, summons him to the palace. Mozart happily accepts the job, much to the annoyance of Salieri. Mozart premieres Die Entführung aus dem Serail to mixed reviews from the Emperor. Salieri suspects that Mozart has slept with the star, Caterina Cavalieri, despite his engagement to Constanze Weber.

The Emperor desires that Mozart instruct his niece, Princess Elisabeth, in music, but Salieri discourages him from doing so. Constanze visits Salieri to persuade him to make the Emperor reconsider, but she is unsuccessful.

Salieri is enraged that God has bestowed upon Mozart the talent he has so desperately desired and vows to destroy Mozart. Mozart, meanwhile, struggles to find work and begins drinking. His father, Leopold Mozart, comes to visit him in Vienna. Constanze and Mozart take Leopold to a masked party (which Salieri also attends), where Mozart entertains the guests with musical antics. Leopold disapproves of his son's hedonism, and the family argues until Leopold leaves town.

Salieri hires a young girl to pose as the Mozarts' maid while spying for him. She takes him to the Mozart residence, where he 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.

Messengers arrive in Vienna with news of Leopold's death, and in response a grief-stricken Mozart pens Don Giovanni. Salieri recognizes the dead commander as symbolic of Leopold and hatches a plan. Wearing Leopold's party mask, Salieri visits Mozart and commissions a Requiem Mass. Salieri plots to kill Mozart once the piece is finished, then premiere it at Mozart's funeral, claiming the work as his own.

At a parody of one of Mozart's own operas, Emanuel Schikaneder asks Mozart to write an opera for his theater. Mozart, desperate for money, obliges, despite Constanze's insistence that he finish the Requiem Mass. The couple fight and Constanze leaves with their young son, Karl.

Mozart collapses during a performance of his finished work, The Magic Flute. Salieri takes him home and offers his assistance on the Requiem. Salieri transcribes Mozart's verbal commands, and they work through the night. The next morning, a gravely ill Mozart apologizes to Salieri for his previous behavior. A guilty Constanze returns home and locks the unfinished Requiem away, only to find that Mozart has died from overwork. Mozart is taken out of the city and unceremoniously buried in a mass grave.

Having finished his tale, Salieri asks how a merciful God could destroy his own beloved just to keep a mediocrity like Salieri from sharing in his glory. As he is pushed down the hall in a wheelchair, Salieri declares himself "the patron saint of mediocrities" and mockingly absolves the other patients of their own inadequacies. Mozart's high-pitched laugh is heard as the screen fades to black.

Cast

Production

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.[3]

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.[4] Tom Hulce reportedly used John McEnroe's mood swings as a source of inspiration for his portrayal of Mozart's unpredictable genius.[5]

Meg Tilly was cast as Mozart's wife Constanze, but she tore a ligament in her leg the day before shooting started.[5] 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[6] and Kroměříž.[7] 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.[8] Several other scenes were shot at the Barrandov Studios.[9]

Forman collaborated with American choreographer Twyla Tharp.[10]

Reception

As of the current date, Amadeus holds a score of 93% on movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 90 reviews[11], with an average rating of 8.3/10. 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 "(here is the genius of the movie) 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".[12] 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."[13] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic put it on his list of films worth seeing.[14] 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.[15] The film's many historical inaccuracies have attracted criticism from music historians.[16][17]

In 1985, the film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, including the double nomination for Best Actor with Hulce and Abraham each being nominated for their portrayals of Mozart and Salieri, respectively. The film won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Abraham), Best Director (Forman), Costume Design (Theodor Pištěk), Adapted Screenplay (Shaffer), Art Direction (Karel Černý, Patrizia von Brandenstein), Best Makeup, and Best Sound. The film was nominated for, but did not win Oscars for Best Cinematography and Best Editing. Amadeus, 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.[18][19][20][21] Amadeus peaked at #6 during its 8th weekend in theaters. Saul Zaentz produced both Amadeus and The English Patient.

The film was nominated for six Golden Globe Awards (Hulce and Abraham were nominated together) and won four, including awards to Forman, Abraham, Shaffer, and Golden Globe Award for Best Picture – Drama. Jeffrey Jones was nominated for Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture Drama. Forman also received the Directors Guild of America Award for his work.

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 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 (in his 78th year) had been ill for many years, and it was because of mild dementia that he forgot to read the nominees.[22] Zaentz then thanked Olivier, saying it was an honour to receive the award from him,[23] 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 the Oscar for 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".[24]

Alternative versions

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[25]. 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:

Music

The soundtrack album[27] reached #1 in the Billboard Classical Albums Chart, #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.[28] It won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Album in 1984.[29]

  • Disc 1
  • Disc 2

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 in the beginning of the film, as Salieri begins his confession.

The aria "Ruhe sanft" from the opera Zaide does not appear in the film.

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 on the original soundtrack release.[30]

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[31] (included on the Original Soundtrack Recording).

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.[32] 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:

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards 1985:

Golden Globe Awards 1985:

1984 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards:

American Cinema Editors:

  • Won (1)[37] Best Edited Feature Film (Nena Danevic and Michael Chandler)

Casting Society of America:

  • Won (1) Best Casting for Feature Film (Mary Goldberg)

Directors Guild of America:

  • Won (1) Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (Miloš Forman)

Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award:

  • Won (1) Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham)

American Film Institute:

BAFTA:

  • Won (4) Best Cinematography (Miroslav Ondříček) Best Editing (Nena Danevic and Michael Chandler) Best Make Up Artist (Dick Smith and Paul LeBlanc) Best Sound (Mark Berger, Thomas Scott and Christopher Newman)
  • Nominated Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham) Best Costume Design (Theodor Pištěk) Best Film (Miloš Forman and Saul Zaentz) Best Production Design (Patrizia von Brandstein) Best Screenplay – Adapted (Peter Shaffer)

David di Donatello:

Nastro d'Argento:

  • Won (2) Best Actor – Foreign Film (Tom Hulce) Best Director – Foreign Film (Miloš Forman)

César Award:

Japan Academy Prize:

Amanda Award:

  • Won (1) Best Foreign Feature Film
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