The Mercurial Genius

Rating: 9/10 (5 October 2007)

Long after his rival died at a young age and his world essentially obliterated by the Napoleonic wars, Antonio Salieri as played by F. Murray Abraham looks back on his life from the confines of an insane asylum. Everywhere the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is played and hummed familiarly by even the masses. Scholars study Salieri, the people from all walks of life listen to the notes that Amadeus put down for posterity.
Amadeus is a wonderful recreation of the court at Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna during the age of reason. The Hapsburgs have now become the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine as a result of Maria Theresa becoming the first female monarch of their empire. The empire and the court are now ruled by her son Joseph as played by Jeffrey Jones.
What I liked about the film is that author Peter Shaffer obviously researched with great care the period this rivalry between Salieri and Mozart takes place. Jones remarks on more than one occasion about letters he got from his sister Antoinette from the French court and what she's observing, but not quite understanding.
Mozart is played by young Tom Hulce and in one of the few times that two actors from the same film got nominated in the same acting category, Hulce and Abraham were both up for Best Actor and Abraham won as opposed to both of them canceling each other out. It really would be hard to live on the difference in their performances, without a good Mozart and an equally good Salieri, the film would not be the masterpiece it is.
And it did win for Best Picture, Best Director for Milos Forman and a flock of other Oscars, all well deserved. Besides those already mentioned I think you will enjoy Elizabeth Berridge as Mozart's long suffering wife and Roy Dotrice as his more staid and settled father who can't cope with a mercurial genius of a son any better than Abraham can.
And Amadeus brought a revival of interest in the old classical masters and that's always a good thing.