Amadeus-Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

 

This film came out during one of the greatest years in film history. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year, and in my opinion, it is the best film of that decade. I have written about the film before on my retrospective blog "30 Years On". It is doubtful that any of you reading this will be unfamiliar with the film, but if that is the case let me briefly sum the story up. Antonio Salieri the court composer, develops a degree of envy of Mozart that leads him to plot a complicated revenge. 

F. Murray Abraham was a character actor who was given the keys to a fantastic part, and he floors it all the way to a well deserved Academy Award for Best Actor. Salieri has charm, and guile and anger that he channels at all the right times. Abraham has a great range, and is the most duplicitous friend a great composer could have. Abraham makes us both pity and hate Salieri at the same time. The scenes that I find most effecting however, are not the plot driven moments, but the character points, especially the sequences where he waxes about the music. His own compositions are not worthy, as he discovers when comparing himself to Mozart. When he describes listening to Mozart's Operas, he is carried away with envy and passion. 

The best moments of the film occur at the climax, fittingly soaking up the talent of his rival and grateful to be a participant in writing it down. The fact that Salieri plans to steal the Requiem that is emotionally draining Mozart, is almost irrelevant to the moments of intense joy he experiences in seeing how Mozart works and participating in just a little bit. Both Abraham and Tom Hulce, who played Mozart, were nominated for the acting honors and this scene earned them both a place in history. This past weekend, CBS Sunday Morning had a little piece on the actor who played Mozart's alleged assassin. You can watch it here:

  

My only reservation about last night's screening is that it was the so called "Director's Cut", which is a 2002 revision. I'd seen the material on a a Laserdisc Special Edition from 1995. There, Director Miloš Forman explained why the material was left out, it mostly had to do with time. Figuring with a DVD release, that time was not an issue, they went back to the original script. I don't think it works as well in a theater. I think the right choice was made when the film originally came out in 1984. While there are a few moments that are enhancements (a longer version of the Opera Don Giovanni for instance), most of the time it feels like padding and the narrative is undermined a little. I'd still say it was better than any other film of the decade, except for the original version. 

What makes the film more memorable and powerful than the play is the way that music can be integrated into the story. We see segments of the Operas, we hear key pieces used for dramatic purpose in the score. The mix of aural and visual is simply superb in this film. The opportunity to see "Amadeus" on the big screen does not come up as frequently as those for "Lawrence of Arabia", if it did, you would see far more entries on this site.

 

Top Ten List for My Birthday #7

I have been writing this blog for over ten years now, and I have resisted putting up a list of my favorite films for that whole time. As the Borg say "Resistance is Futile!" 

This year I am marking another year in my sixth decade of life. I did several birthday posts in the past and enjoyed them immensely. The last two years my heart has just not been into it. This year however, I am trying to push my way back into normalcy, but I don't have the energy to generate 63 things for a list. So what I am going to do is a ten day countdown of my favorite films.

Every year when I have posted a top ten list, I always point out that it is a combination of quality and subjective enjoyment that creates that list. Those are the guiding principles here as well. I will not claim that these are the ten greatest movies ever made, although I know several of them would be deserving of a spot on such a list. Instead, these are my ten favorite films as it stands at the moment. In a month, I could reconsider or remember something that I have tragically left off the list, but for this moment here is how they rank.

#7 Amadeus

When I was a kid, I took piano lessons for two years, and classical music was at the heart of what I was learning. That endeavor has been largely wasted in the subsequent time. I can't remember anything about playing, I can't read music, and for a long time I was ignorantly avoiding that style of music. I college I did take a class in concert music, but I skated by with as little effort as I could put into it. In 1984 however, my love of this genre returned with the release of this film. 

I'd seen the stage play of this story earlier in the year, but it did not prepare me for the onslaught of beauty and awe that Mozart's music is. The film wallows in it. The opening use of music from Don Giovani sets the stage for everything that happens later. It is dramatic, closely tied to the visuals and it moves the audience in the way the director intended. There are a dozen moments like this in the film, and the music is as big a co-star as any of the actors. 

Of course the actors are not too shabby either. Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham dance a duet of acting performance that may never have been matched since. Mozart is a callow self centered genius who is only appreciated to the degree he deserves by the resentful mediocrity Salieri. Every time Hulce laughs, we are amused but also indignant. Why is this master at music so awkward at life in the court? Salieri allows jealousy to spoil his pious and grateful love of God and turn him into a smooth monster, determined to stifle the greatness that he himself lacks.

No one should take this as history, it is a fiction using real characters but everyone can see how it might have been this way (it wasn't). The production uses Prague as a substitute for  Vienna, and it works for me. The costuming is amazing and there are musical moments in the film that you might wish to have as a complete concert or opera. Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields supply the music and there were two double albums released to allow us to celebrate it. 

Anytime someone has a top twenty list of films, and this does not appear on it. I doubt their credibility or taste. I am still not an classical music connoisseur, but I am a fan, and this film brought me back to that world. I wish I could sit in the theater again, waiting for the first time to see this film.  The moment of euphoria it provided has led me to decades of pursuing the same high in movie theaters and concert halls. And that is something a film should aspire to do.

Previous Posts on Amadeus

30 Years On: Amadeus