Barker’s Classic Movies #4: AMADEUS *****
Mozart: Do you believe in it?…A fire which never dies, burning you forever?
Salieri: (a pause) Oh, yes.
Amadeus (1984)
running time: 2 hr., 40 m. / original studio: Orion / original rating: PG
directed by Milos Forman; screenplay by Peter Shaffer, from his play; director of photography, Miroslav Ondricek; edited by Michael Chandler; music supervisor: Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
with: F. Murray Abraham (Salieri), Tom Hulce (Mozart), Elizabeth Berridge (Constanze Mozart), Simon Callow (Emanuel Schikaneder)
The confessions of Antonio Salieri, a classical composer who claimed that he murdered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Made near the middle of the 1980s, a decade generally known for the triumph of crass commercialism over any kind of aesthetic value in the movies, Amadeus is the exception to the rule, a sensuous fantasia in period costume that speculates upon one of life’s greatest mysteries, the origin and nature of musical genius, with unapologetic wit, exuberance and style. I know of no other film in English that uses cinematic grammar so deftly, with such mastery of its highs and lows, to convey emotions and ideas that should be inexplicable: the all-consuming experience of creativity at its peak; the exhilaration of recognizing a true, almost magical brilliance in another person; and the damnation of a well-earned, inextinguishable jealousy.
The film is often misunderstood as bad history, or at least bad biography, but that is like complaining because a book doesn’t have enough color pictures. Or, to paraphrase Vladimir Nabokov for my own purposes, it is childish to study a movie in order to glean hard facts about history or a real person’s life. The pleasures of movie-watching come in other, less rational shapes, as shadowy projections of who we are, and sometimes of what we fear ourselves to be.
Based on a highly successful play of the 1970s by Peter Shaffer, Amadeus riffs on several key facts from Mozart’s last years, exaggerating and expanding them for its own ends, in particular the claim made by Antonio Salieri that he was responsible for Mozart’s death. By the time Salieri made that claim, he was confined to an asylum, thought to be insane, and his assertions were never proven. Shaffer, a long time Mozart fanatic, was compelled to ask the dramatist’s most important question, What If?: What if Salieri really had, somehow, arranged Mozart’s untimely death? What would have driven him to conceive such an act and carry it out?
Shaffer decided on artistic jealousy as the answer. But he didn’t envision just any run-of-the-mill, moustache-twirling envy for Salieri. Instead, Shaffer gave him an ability to see and hear what others of his time could not possibly have known: that Mozart was a supremely gifted musician, seemingly touched by God, destined to synthesize the known realms of musical art into their most refined and transcendent forms to date. There was not a classical genre that Mozart could not master, then reinvent; his compositions paired instruments that had never been used together before, developing new, delightful harmonies; and he was an extraordinary musician in his own right, with a special felicity on the piano, which led him to create the piano concerto as we know it.
And still, these accomplishments are not what truly irks Shaffer’s Salieri. What really sticks in his craw is Mozart the Man, a giggling prankster, profoundly lacking in social skills, who seduces women with adolescent toilet humor and indulges in puerile demonstrations of his talent to humiliate lesser beings. For a man of Salieri’s religious beliefs, who has spent his life struggling, as most of us do, to attain even a brief measure of skill and accomplishment at something we cherish, it seems that God has chosen “an obscene child to be his instrument.” Salieri’s frustrations shift, and his jealousy is transmuted to a higher order: he doesn’t attempt to destroy Mozart out of mere earthly envy, but out of a bottomless petulance toward the Almighty Himself, making all of creation his enemy.
It could be argued that Amadeus (which means “beloved of God”) is not really about Mozart at all, except in those soaring passages where Salieri describes the wonders of his music for layman’s ears. It is about Salieri’s perception of Mozart as a mocking instrument of the Divine, and about his own guilt and self-damnation for being nothing more than a mortal, average composer. Some music experts have been quick to argue against the film’s veracity, its “realism,” by pointing out that Salieri wasn’t really mediocre at all, he was actually a pretty darn good composer, but that is a matter for conscientious history. Peter Shaffer’s Salieri feels mediocre when in the presence of Mozart’s music, down to his very soul, and that is the engine driving this particular work, one of the most invigorating, insightful and moving films about art and artists ever made.
Beautifully directed by Czech émigré Milos Forman, using a cast of unknowns and a hand-picked crew of designers and craftspeople, the film of Amadeus is both a grand example of film as collaborative art, and as a single, unifying vision. Inspired by Shaffer’s play, Forman worked with the playwright for months, forging an adaptation that retained the language of the original while dismantling its structure and rebuilding it as a cinematic experience. He also inspired Shaffer to invent many new scenes that could only be staged for a film. This is no quick expansion of a theatrical piece, breaking up a few scenes into smaller sections to imitate the flow of a movie, but a complete revamping, transforming Salieri’s monologues, originally addressed to the audience, into a stream-of-consciousness montage on 18th century life and politics, adding irony to his words with a constant visual counterpoint.
Shaffer and Forman’s most important change was to expand the role of Mozart’s music, which had obviously played an important part in the play, but which could now saturate the film, in effect becoming a third major character. Both Mozart and Salieri are consumed by music and their obsession frequently takes over the very fabric consciousness so that music becomes their reality, a condition which Forman continually exploits to thrilling dramatic effect.
In one of the film’s best scenes, Mozart is hard at work writing on a billiard table, the process so automatic for him, as Salieri imagines it, that he can roll one of the balls back and forth while copying down notes between bounces, as if he was taking dictation from God. The serenely meditative music that Mozart is composing blankets the soundtrack, the only sound in the world, until he is interrupted to deal with a domestic problem. But when his wife and father start bickering, threatening the symmetry Mozart creates for himself through composition, the music simply returns, erasing everything but the melody he hears in his “noodle,” and he returns to his writing while his family shouts. It is a marvelous device, wordlessly illustrating how an artist’s imagination can and must supersede everything else around him (or her), if the art is ever to be made and shared with others.
The technique reaches its apex in the film’s climax, when Salieri actually does take dictation from Mozart, helping him finish his Requiem Mass, the soundtrack layered with the composers’ technical jargon and, simultaneously, the musical passages they are discussing. It is a thrilling moment, capturing just a small taste of real creative exhilaration, and one doesn’t have to know that first thing about music to be caught up and swept away by it.
That scene, and Forman’s film, are helped immeasurably by two great actors, each in the role of a lifetime and making every moment count: F. Murray Abraham as Salieri, and Tom Hulce as Mozart. Hulce has the showier part to be sure, with his infectious, high-pitched giggle and his superb faking of Mozart’s flair on the piano, but as the film progresses he also infuses a great deal of humanity into a character that could easily become a two-dimensional clown. But it is Abraham who must carry the film and he is electrifying, savoring every beat of Peter Shaffer’s glorious monologues, hitting every emotional note with perfect pitch. He is by turns hilarious, terrifying, heartbreaking and finally, unforgettable, a mesmerizing storyteller at the peak of his powers. In fact, one of the more pointed ironies of watching Amadeus is Abraham’s unqualified brilliance as a performer, which is completely at odds with the film’s theme of mediocrity overshadowed by greatness.
Filmed entirely in Prague, which was Milos Forman’s home until the Soviet invasion of 1968 (see Notes). Amadeus marked his first return to the city of his youth since the invasion, a place seemingly untouched since the 18th century, right down to the original opera house where Mozart’s Don Giovanni first premiered. Coupled with the fabulous costume design by Theodor Pistek, Prague lends the weight of real history to the images, as if Forman had used a time machine to make his movie.
Like most films shot in Panavision, Amadeus is best seen in a movie theater, where its lush details of time and place can be fully appreciated without a magnifying glass and the full dramatic spectrum of Mozart’s music, impeccably recreated by conductor Neville Marriner, is given the proper volume.
NOTES:
THE “REAL” WOLFIE: Just as he is portrayed in the film, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was the most famous child prodigy of his time. The latest biographical research on him indicates that his father did indeed drive him, in a manner that might now be considered abusive. But Mozart was devoted to “Papa,” and fanatically dedicated to his art from an early age. Though he was writing virtuoso pieces at twelve, his magic did not bloom and flourish until he was in his mid-twenties and moved to Vienna.
Mozart was a natural to be sure, but it is the incessant hard work throughout his life and his frequent contact with the other great musicians and composers of his day, which fill out the puzzle of his genius. Though he had an extraordinary gift, he never ceased pushing his talent and his art form beyond their limits, creating hundreds of masterworks in every genre of the classical repertoire, from songs to symphonies, with a mind-boggling variety of experimentation, melody and lasting innovation. And he only got better with practice.
Mozart’s letters reveal an obsession with scatological humor that never abated; his obnoxious laugh was well-known by contemporaries. Accounts of his death indicate that it was rheumatic fever, not Salieri, that hastened his departure from this world at the age of 35. He actually did dictate instructions for finishing the Requiem on his death bed, but he did so to Franz Süssmayr, a journeyman composer who later became Kapellmeister of the Viennese National Theatre.
Mozart was buried in a mass grave, as in the film, but this was common practice in Vienna at the time. His death was widely publicized and he was mourned by the whole community. He was survived by many children, and his wife Constanze eventually lived quite well on the proceeds of his compositions, a very astute business woman in his wake.
Check out Mozart: A Life by Maynard Solomon (Perennial, 1996)
ANTONIO SALIERI: (1750-1825) wrote some of the most popular operas in Europe during the early part of his career, but his later work was indifferently received. He spent the last two decades of his life composing sacred music and teaching. Among his many notable students was Ludwig van Beethoven, whom he also saw rise to the heights of musical renown with a popularity that not only eclipsed Mozart, but all who came before. Salieri was no doubt well acquainted with “Wolfie,” but there is no evidence he had anything to do with his death.
The first play to speculate on their supposed enmity was Mozart and Salieri (1831) by Alexander Pushkin.
THE ÉMIGRÉ: Still one of the most interesting directors of our time, Milos Forman (b. 1932) lost his parents to the death camp at Auschwitz and was raised by relatives. He attended the prestigious Prague Film Faculty and became the leading figure of his national cinema in 1965 with The Loves of a Blonde, a quirky, realistic comedy about working-class Czechs trying to find romance in a harsh world.
Forman was forced to leave his homeland after the Russian invasion in 1968 and took some time acclimating to America, but finally regained his international reputation with an astonishing adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) the same year he became a U.S. citizen. A two-time Oscar winner himself, he is especially known for capturing great performances on film. Forman is hard to please when it comes to choosing material, often going five years or more between projects, but the result is always an unusual, thought-provoking film: cf. Hair (1979), Ragtime (1981), Valmont (1989), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Man on the Moon (1999). He is now at work on Amarillo Slim, with Nicholas Cage.
OSCAR STATS: Very controversial in its day for its failure to be a documentary, Amadeus took home 8 Academy Awards, out of 11 nominations: Best Picture, Actor (Abraham), Director, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction-Set Decoration, Costume Design, Sound Recording and Makeup. Hulce was also nominated for Actor.
THE DVD: The first edition of Amadeus to hit the DVD market was released by Warner Home Video in 1997. Designed before dual-layer technology, the movie was placed on both sides of a single disc, requiring the viewer to turn it over for the second half of the film. Not the greatest of situations to be sure, but that version did have a music-only track, which was particularly apt for this film.
Warners put out the requisite, two-disc special edition in the fall of 2002 with all sorts of extras, but mysteriously lacking the music-only feature and touting a Director’s Cut with twenty minutes of added scenes. Not all Director’s Cuts are created equal, however. Though some of the added scenes are entertaining in their own way, they really do nothing to deepen the viewer’s appreciation of either the characters or story and, frankly, wind up lessening the film’s impact. The Making-of documentaries on the second disc are fine, especially when detailing the love-hate relationship between Shaffer and Forman, but they are mostly a series of straight-forward, unimaginative talking head interviews.
All-in-all, I prefer the earlier DVD, which is still available at both DVD Planet (http://www.dvdplanet.com/main.asp ) and Amazon.
OTHER RECENT CLASSICS ON DVD:
It’s a great time to be collecting the classics…
Disney just released Uncle Walt’s Bambi (1942), one of the indispensable landmarks of hand-drawn animation;
In March, Criterion gave us Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (1980), François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1961) at last; and Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (Eclipse, 1962), if you like Antonioni, that is;
Fox released Otto Preminger’s labyrinthine noir masterpiece Laura (1944);
And the ever busy Warner Home Video just put out a quintet of Errol Flynn’s best films, including the swashbuckling must-see, The Sea Hawk (1940).
Eric Barker is an independent filmmaker and writer living in Denver.
Barker’s Classic Movies #3 was Bringing Up Baby
