Great Movie Despite Silly Premise

Rating: 10/10 (25 April 2006)

The window-dressing (halls, clothing, lighting, etc.) lend "Amadeus" an appearance that is scrumptious, and looks extremely accurate. All the scenic design is icing on a delicious cake half-baked on a silly premise, that Mozart(presented almost like an idiot savant, with emphasis on the first word) is -- and here's the spoiler, if there's a person on the planet who doesn't know -- "murdered" by fellow composer Antonio Salieri. That "Amadeus" isn't like a hollow Faberge egg with a dumb morality tale rattling around inside it is a tribute to the artists behind this wonderful movie.
Antonio Salieri is the pop sensation of his day. He has the approval of the emperor, the friendship of the court, the adulation of the masses. He lives in palaces, moves with the "in" crowd, and the fame and adulation keep rolling in. He has a burning ambition to be the best -- and for everyone to know it. He has everything . . . except talent.
He hears distantly of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, boy prodigy, and he hopes one day to meet this musical marvel and strike up a friendship with a fellow artiste. When the fabled Mozart finally crosses his path, Salieri is appalled by the young man's vulgarity and his lack of appreciation for the finer things.
Yet when Salieri hears Mozart's music, he desperately desires the one thing Mozart has that he himself lacks: musical genius. This comes through powerfully later in the film when Salieri tricks Mozart's wife into bringing him Mozart's "originals" -- page after page of rough draft music that was written out finished, and beautiful, and better than anything Salieri himself could even do (this is the most famous scene in the movie and may have been instrumental in winning for Abraham his deserved Oscar). And when Salieri learns Mozart had been fiddling around with his girl, he earnestly hates Mozart with an earnest detestation.
Though he refers to Mozart as a "creature" he envies him. Mozart has proved that everything in his life is superficial, and that he has never, and probably will never, produce anything of lasting value. Just as everything in his life has been outward show, he easily abandons his superficial religious faith. Instead of disbelieving in a Deity who could dispense His gifts to such a man as Mozart, Salieri's envy and hate sets him on a course to "punish" God by ridding the earth of the creature that makes such pretty noises. And he will gain public admiration forever by authoring a requiem for his "friend" -- though, in his wry sense of irony, Salieri will make W.A. Mozart actually write the thing before he kills him off.
Salieri performs several little cruelties on his way to the ultimate cruelty. The restored DVD version gives a scene where Salieri savagely humiliates Mozart's wife, Constanze.
It is not clear if Salieri the anti-God actually killed Mozart or if it was the natural order of things, but Salieri gets his comeuppance, his own "Confutatis maledictis" that is helped along by the more savvy Constanze, who knows what sort of man Salieri really is. The scene where Salieri and Mozart hammer out the Mass is one of the most exciting scenes of cinema in the '80s -- with one man sitting at a desk and the other lying in a bed!
In real life, Antonio Salieri was an accomplished musician, many of whose works remain in print. His stuff fell out of favor -- but Vivaldi predated Mozart and Salieri, and his music was barely heard after his death until the 20th century! Musical tastes change -- how many discotheques are open in the 21st century? Not as many as in the 1970s, I warrant. And there are ample implications in the historical record that Salieri and Mozart got along quite well. So the story inside the beautiful decor is a libelous fiction -- in fact, it's a lot of hooey. But when have novels or films cared for historical fact over a cracking good story? And it's probably more correct to call it a parable.
Mozart and Salieri aren't really meant to be embodiments of their real-life counterparts. Salieri is an archetype. And if Mozart was this much of a bozo in real life he deserved all he got.
All the performances are wonderful, especially in the Emperor's court. Charles Kay is superb, Jonathan Moore is the epitome of sincerity, and Jeffrey Jones expresses more by his extreme underplaying than many more notable actors do in several movies of bluster. Sometimes you wonder if someone ought to take Jones' pulse, but you're always aware of what the emperor is thinking.
The two majors are amazing. Tom Hulce's pixilated Mozart and F. Murray Abraham's envious Salieri are so good they could've carried the movie if it had been a two-man show, a "My Dinner with Wolfie"