Excellent!!

Rating: 9/10 (19 June 2013)

As a student of art history, I was fascinated by how much history really came across on screen. Not necessarily historical fact (I know that Salieri didn't murder Mozart, and most likely didn't try, and there were undoubtedly many other inaccuracies, due to the need for condensation). When I think history, I usually think of the history of ideas. And if you want to look at the historical development that took place from the idea of the artist dedicated to God, and the modern one of an artist as a tormented individual, striving for excellence on his own, you can see it in Salieri. And the film also made it clear how the coming revolutionary changes in 18th-19th Europe were to carry the artist from having to please a patron to having to make it in a democratic marketplace (well, until the founding of the NEA, anyway). Just compare this film to that odious monstrosity "Shakespeare in Love", which also, inconceivably, won a Best-Pictur Oscar! There, nothing goes beyond dull sitcom contrivance and clichés about the theater, and the conception of the characters is so thoroughly twentieth-century that no real historical ideas can possibly get though. Please, people, see "Amadeus" instead!