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1984 film directed by Miloš Forman From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Amadeus is a 1984 American period biographical drama film directed by Miloš Forman, and adapted by Peter Shaffer from his 1979 stage play of the same name, in turn inspired by the 1830 play Mozart and Salieri by Alexander Pushkin. Set in Vienna, Austria, during the latter half of the 18th century, the film is a fictionalized story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from the time he left Salzburg. It is described by its writer as a "fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri". Mozart's music is heard extensively in the soundtrack. The film follows a fictional rivalry between Mozart and Italian composer and teacher to world renowned composers Antonio Salieri at the court of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. The film stars F. Murray Abraham as Salieri and Tom Hulce as Mozart. Abraham and Hulce were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, with Abraham winning the award.
| Amadeus | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster by Peter Sís | |
| Directed by | Miloš Forman |
| Screenplay by | Peter Shaffer |
| Based on |
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| Produced by | Saul Zaentz |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Miroslav Ondříček |
| Edited by | |
Production company | |
| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 161 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $18 million[2] |
| Box office | $90 million[3] |
Amadeus was released by Orion Pictures on September 19, 1984, thirteen days after its world premiere in Los Angeles on September 6, 1984. Upon release, it received widespread acclaim and was a box office hit, grossing over $90 million. Amadeus was nominated for 53 awards and received 40, including eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), four BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards (including Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director), and a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film. As of 2024[update], it was 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. In 2019, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4][5][6]
In the winter of 1823, aged composer Antonio Salieri is committed to a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide, during which his servants overhear him confess to murdering Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A young priest, Father Vogler, approaches Salieri and tells him to confess his sins and find God's peace. Salieri plays three melodies for Vogler. Vogler is embarrassed to admit that he cannot recognize the first two (which Salieri wrote), but is relieved to recognize the third (Eine kleine Nachtmusik) at once. Salieri peevishly reveals that Mozart wrote it.
Salieri begins his confession by saying that he grew up hearing stories of Mozart the child prodigy. As a youth, Salieri offered God a deal: if He allowed Salieri to become a famous musician like Mozart, Salieri would—in return—promise his faithfulness, chastity, and diligence. Soon after, his unsupportive father chokes on his food and dies, which Salieri interprets as a sign that God has accepted his vow. By 1774, Salieri becomes court composer to Emperor Joseph II in Vienna. However, he has enough taste to know that Emperor Joseph has no ear for music, and that his own compositions will not stand the test of time.
Seven years later, Salieri anxiously awaits meeting Mozart at a reception in honor of Mozart's patron, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. He is shocked to discover that Mozart is obscene, immature, and dissolute. In addition, Mozart never needs to pen a second draft of his music (see Mozart's compositional method), implying that he is divinely inspired. Salieri cannot fathom why God would choose a reprobate like Mozart as His instrument. Salieri renounces God and vows to take revenge on Him by destroying Mozart.
Mozart's work is groundbreaking, but it does not fit the tastes of the day. To his wife Constanze's dismay, his underwhelming earnings cannot keep up with his lavish spending. Salieri and Mozart bond over their shared contempt for Emperor Joseph's lack of taste, but for the same reason, Mozart is unimpressed by Salieri's populist work, which causes Salieri great pain.
Mozart boldly adapts the subversive play The Marriage of Figaro into an opera. Salieri rejoices, thinking Mozart's career is ruined, but Mozart stuns Salieri by convincing the Emperor to approve the opera. However, to Salieri's equal disbelief, the Emperor finds the opera boring, and it is promptly cancelled. In response, Mozart composes Don Giovanni in memory of his late father. Salieri is entranced, but vindictively gets that opera cancelled too. Renouncing Vienna's artistic establishment, Mozart attempts one final gamble by agreeing to write The Magic Flute for a commoners' theater.
After watching Don Giovanni five times, Salieri realizes that the dead commander who accuses Giovanni of sin represents Mozart's inferiority complex towards his own father. He concocts a scheme to persuade the unstable Mozart that his dead father has risen to commission a Requiem Mass. He then plans to kill Mozart once the piece is finished, claim it as his own, and premiere it at Mozart's funeral, forcing God to listen as Salieri is acclaimed. Mozart overworks himself juggling both The Magic Flute and the Requiem. Constanze, who wants him to focus on the Requiem, leaves with their son Karl. Although The Magic Flute is a success, the exhausted Mozart collapses during one performance.
Realizing that Mozart is dying, and desperate for more of his heavenly music, Salieri begs the bedridden Mozart to keep writing the Requiem. He takes dictation from Mozart, during which he comes to terms with Mozart's superior talent. The next morning, Mozart thanks Salieri for his friendship and Salieri admits that Mozart is the greatest composer he knows.
Constanze returns and promptly kicks Salieri out of the apartment.[a] After shoving the Requiem into a cabinet, she finds that Mozart has passed away. Due to his debts, he is unceremoniously buried in a pauper's grave.
Back in 1823, Vogler is too shaken to absolve Salieri, who surmises that God would rather destroy His beloved Mozart than allow Salieri to share in the smallest part of Mozart's glory. As Salieri is wheeled down a hallway, he proclaims himself the patron saint of mediocrities. He loudly absolves the asylum's other patients of their inadequacies as Mozart's laughter rings in the air.
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] 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]
Amadeus holds a score of 89% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 154 reviews, with an average rating of 8.9/10. The site's consensus states: "Amadeus' liberties with history may rankle some, but the creative marriage of Miloš Forman and Peter Shaffer yields a divinely diabolical myth of genius and mediocrity, buoyed by inspired casting and Mozart's rapturous music."[16]
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 that "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".[17] Ebert later added the film to his Great Movies list.[17] 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."[18] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic put it on his list of films worth seeing.[19]
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.[20] The film's many historical inaccuracies have attracted criticism from music historians.[21][22]
The film grossed $52 million in the United States and Canada[2] and by November 1985, while still in theatres overseas, had grossed over $90 million worldwide to date.[3]
The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning eight (including Best Picture). 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 signalled 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.[23] Zaentz then thanked Olivier, saying it was an honour to receive the award from him,[24] 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 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".[25]
The film along with 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.[26][27][28][29] The film peaked at No. 6 during its 8th weekend in theaters. Saul Zaentz produced both Amadeus and The English Patient.
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".[44]
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,[44] which in turn had its first screen adaptation by silent-film director Victor Tourjansky in 1914.[45]
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.[46]
Amadeus premiered in 1984 as a PG-rated movie with a running time of 161 minutes. Director Miloš Forman later introduced an R-rated version with nearly 20 minutes of restored footage, which was released by the studios as a Director's Cut on September 24, 2002.[47] Since 2024, the Director's Cut has been the only available version of the film, as the producers modified the original film negative to include the additional footage, although the producers have promised to re-release the theatrical edition at an unspecified future date.[48]
It is not clear whether the Director's Cut represents Forman's actual artistic vision. Forman defended the 20 minutes of cuts in his 1993 autobiography Turnaround,[49] and repeated his defense in the 1995 supplemental material for Pioneer's deluxe LaserDisc. The Director's Cut has come under severe criticism, in part because it displaced the theatrical edition, instead of complementing it. Rian Johnson argued that the Director's Cut "is bizarrely a sort of inverse master class in editing: It shows exactly why the cuts were made in the first place & how they made the film work."[50] Roger Ebert noted that the cut was part of a broader wave of directors’ cuts on home video, which he characterized as a “mixed blessing."[51] The A.V. Club's Tasha Robinson noted that most of the additional sequences were either redundant or unnecessary, and broke up the "lively flow between scenes" that marked the theatrical edition's "superb[]" editing."[52]
On the other hand, critics have recognized the merits of some of the additional scenes. Ebert and Robinson agreed that the added scenes better explained Constanze's hatred for Salieri, although Robinson questioned whether that subplot actually needed a topless scene.[51][52] Foreign Policy's Jordan Hoffmann added that the subplot featuring Christine Ebersole as a Salieri-favored singer who sleeps with Mozart, was "splendid."[53]
More broadly, while promoting the Director's Cut, Forman argued that the unlimited running time of home video provided a better environment for the deleted scenes:
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?[54]
In 2024, Saul Zaentz Co. announced that in conjunction with the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Film, it had completed a 4K restoration of Amadeus (including the theatrical cut) to celebrate the film's 40th anniversary. The restorers noted that Paul Zaentz, Saul's nephew and successor, personally preferred the theatrical edition to the director's cut. The producers announced that a restored version of the theatrical edition will be made available on home video.[48]
The soundtrack album[55] reached No. 1 in the Billboard Classical Albums Chart, No. 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.[56] It won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Album in 1984.[57]
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 at the beginning of the film, as Salieri begins his confession.
The aria "Ruhe sanft" from the opera Zaide does not appear in the film.
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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 in the original soundtrack release.[71]
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[72] (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.[73] 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:
A TV series adaptation of the original Shaffer play starring Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany will air on Sky TV in late 2024.[74]
The pink wig worn by Mozart in the movie can be seen in the permanent exhibition of the Acadian Museum at the University of Moncton. The wig was created by Paul LeBlanc. LeBlanc won an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for this movie in 1985.[75]
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