Amadeus movie review & film summary (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 film where everybody wears wigs, Mozart's wigs (I noted in my original review) do not look like everybody else's. They have just the slightest suggestion of punk, just the smallest shading of pink. There is something about Mozart's Vienna apartment, especially toward the end, that reminds you of the pad of a newly-rich rock musician: The rent is sky-high, the furnishings are sparse and haphazard, work is scattered everywhere, housekeeping has been neglected, there are empty bottles in the corners, and the bed is the center 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 II (Jeffrey Jones) passes strict rules (no ballet in operas!) but cannot enforce them because, God love him, he enjoys what he would forbid. Then there is Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), who poses as his friend while plotting against him, sabotaging productions, blocking appointments. The irony (not least to Salieri) is that Salieri is honored and admired while Mozart is so 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 by his art. Mozart's role in the court of Joseph II is as the fool, saying truth wrapped in giggles. Mozart's ally in his struggles with authority is his wife Constanze (Elizabeth Berridge), who seems a child, stays too late in bed, calls him "Wolfie," but yet has a good head for business and a sharp eye for treachery.
The film is told in flashback by Salieri at the end of his life, confined in a madhouse, confiding to a young priest. He thinks perhaps he killed Mozart. It is more likely Mozart killed himself, by some deadly cocktail of tuberculosis and cirrhosis, but Salieri seems to have killed Mozart's art, and for that he feels remorse. It is all there in Mozart's deathbed scene: The agony of the older rival who hates to lose, who would lie and betray, and yet cannot deny that the young man's music is sublime.
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