Art Featured in Amadeus Movie Masquerade and Neverending Story
Happy people are pleased past the happiness of others. The miserable are poisoned by envy. They vote with Gore Vidal and David Merrick, both credited with saying, "It is not enough that I succeed. Others must fail." Milos Forman's "Amadeus" is not about the genius of Mozart simply about the envy of his rival Salieri, whose curse was to take the talent of a 3rd-rate composer simply the ear of a kickoff-charge per unit music lover, so that he knew how bad he was, and how expert Mozart was.
The about moving scene in the movie takes place at Mozart's deathbed, where the groovy composer, only 35, dictates the final pages of his cracking "Requiem" to Salieri, sitting at the foot of the bed with quill and manuscript, dragging the notes from Mozart'south fevered brain. This scene is moving non because Mozart is dying, but because Salieri, his lifelong rival, is striving to extract from the dying homo yet some other masterpiece that will illuminate how shabby Salieri's piece of work is. Salieri hates Mozart but loves music more, and cannot alive without withal i more work that he tin resent for its perfection. True, Salieri plans to claim the work every bit his ain--just for a man like him, that will be ane more turn of the screw.
"Amadeus" (1984) swept the Academy Awards and had a considerable popular success. When you consider that 98 percentage of the American public never listens to a classical music station, it is astonishing that Mozart became for a time a best-seller, and not only to women assured by talk-evidence gurus that his music boosted the IQs of embryos. The movie's success is partly explained, I recollect, past its strategy of portraying Mozart not equally a paragon whose greatness is a burden to us all, but as a goofy proto-hippie with a high-pitched giggle, an overfondness for drink, and a buxom wife who liked to chase him on all fours.
This is not a vulgarization of Mozart, but a mode of dramatizing that truthful geniuses rarely take their own work seriously, because it comes then easily for them. Corking writers (Nabokov, Dickens, Wodehouse) make it look like play. Nearly-great writers (Mann, Galsworthy, Wolfe) make information technology look like Herculean triumph. It is as truthful in every field; compare Shakespeare to Shaw, Jordan to Barkley, Picasso to Rothko, Kennedy to Nixon. Salieri could strain and moan and bring forth tinkling jingles; Mozart could compose and then joyously that he seemed, Salieri complained, to be "taking dictation from God."
"Amadeus" was brought forth by the contained producer Saul Zaentz ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo'south Nest," "The Unbearable Lightness of Existence," "The English language Patient"), who brought Peter Shaffer'due south play and assigned the playwright to adapt it with the director Milos Forman. Zaentz'due south pattern, as yous can see, is to accept literary successes that seem unfilmable--likewise ambitious, likewise specialized--and film them. Forman, a Czech filmmaker who turned his back on the Russians and came to work in America, but not exactly in Hollywood, had directed "Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), "Hair" (1981) and "Ragtime" (1984).
The key precursor is "Hair." He sees Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a spiritual brother of the hippies who thumbed their noses at convention, muddled their senses with intoxicants, and delighted in lecturing their elders. In a motion-picture show where everybody wears wigs, Mozart'southward wigs (I noted in my original review) exercise not expect similar everybody else'south. They have simply the slightest suggestion of punk, just the smallest shading of pinkish. There is something well-nigh Mozart's Vienna apartment, especially toward the end, that reminds you of the pad of a newly-rich rock musician: The hire is sky-loftier, the furnishings are sparse and haphazard, work is scattered everywhere, housekeeping has been neglected, at that place are empty bottles in the corners, and the bed is the middle of life.
The flower child Mozart tries to govern his life, unsuccessfully, by the lights of three older men. His father Leopold (Roy Dotrice) trained the child genius to amaze the courts of Europe, but now stands aside, disapproving, at the untidy mess Mozart has made of his adulthood. His patron, Emperor Joseph Two (Jeffrey Jones) passes strict rules (no ballet in operas!) just cannot enforce them because, God honey him, he enjoys what he would forbid. And then in that location is Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), who poses as his friend while plotting against him, sabotaging productions, blocking appointments. The irony (non least to Salieri) is that Salieri is honored and admired while Mozart is then new and unfamiliar that no one knows how good he is, except Salieri. Even the emperor, who indulges him, is as amused by Mozart's insolence as past his art. Mozart's office in the court of Joseph II is as the fool, saying truth wrapped in giggles. Mozart'due south ally in his struggles with authority is his wife Constanze (Elizabeth Berridge), who seems a child, stays likewise late in bed, calls him "Wolfie," but nonetheless has a practiced caput for business and a sharp centre for treachery.
The moving picture is told in flashback past Salieri at the end of his life, bars in a madhouse, confiding to a young priest. He thinks maybe he killed Mozart. It is more probable Mozart killed himself, past some deadly cocktail of tuberculosis and cirrhosis, but Salieri seems to accept killed Mozart's art, and for that he feels remorse. Information technology is all there in Mozart's deathbed scene: The agony of the older rival who hates to lose, who would lie and betray, and even so cannot deny that the beau's music is sublime.
The film was shot on location in Forman's native Prague, ane of a handful of European cities still in large parts unchanged since the 18th century. The film is a visual banquet of palaces, costumes, wigs, feasts, opening nights, champagne, and mountains of debt. Mozart never had enough money, or much cared; Salieri had coin, but look at his face when people snicker behind his back while he plays one of his compositions, and you lot volition run across what pocket-sized consolation information technology was.
"Director'due south cuts" are a mixed blessing in this age of the DVD. Many of them seem inspired entirely past the desire to sell another video. Forman says his new version of "Amadeus," which runs xx minutes longer than the 1984 version, is in fact the original cut: Agape that a historical biopic about Mozart would find tough sailing at the box office, Forman and Zaentz fabricated trims for businesslike reasons. The major improver to the film is a scene explaining more than fully why Constanze has such contempt for Salieri. Salieri, the court composer, has in his gift a lucrative appointment that, he explains to the immature bride, will be her married man'due south--if she will grant Salieri her favors. Since in that location is little indication that Salieri has any swell interest in women (or in anything, other than Mozart) this favor seems motivated not by sexual desire but by the demand to humiliate Mozart. Constanze, desperate to help her Wolfie, does indeed visit Salieri at his apartments, and bares her breasts earlier having 2nd thoughts.
In a film of grand gestures, some of the finest moments are very subtle. Notice the manner Jeffrey Jones, as the emperor, balances his duty to appear serious and his please in Mozart's impudence. Watch Jones' confront equally he decides he may have been wrong to ban ballet from opera. And lookout Abraham's face as he internalizes envy, resentment and rage. What a smile he puts on the confront of his misery! So watch his face up again at Mozart's deathbed, as he takes the terminal dictation. He knows how skilful it is. And he knows at that moment there is only one thing he loves more than than himself, and that is Mozart's music.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the motion picture critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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Amadeus (1984)
158 minutes
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Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-amadeus-1984
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