Steven Schwartz wrote:

>I didn't ask for accuracy, although the absolutely brain-dead view of the
>18th century in general annoyed me no end.  My question is why this work
>should exist at all.  What does it give you that Dumb and Dumber doesn't
>(other than a better film score)? It promises an exploration of genius,
>using a Mozart and a Salieri that never existed.  Why Mozart and Salieri
>then, if you're not going to stay within shouting distance of the character
>of either? Why not Ella Fitzgerald and Patti Page? Or Chaplin and Moe
>Howard?

Compared w/ Mozart, Ella and Chaplin lived long and successful lives during
which they received their due recognition (even if Chaplin did experience
some legal and political problems in the USA during the 50s).

I viewed *Amadeus*, both the play and the movie, as Salieri's observation
of a capricious God.  Salieri, ever devout and well intentioned, a
genuine lover of music, and even accomplished in the field, begged God so
desperately for the touch of genius that was always withheld from him but
lavished so generously on an irreverent Mozart.  Salieri then relates how,
having blessed Mozart w/ the gift denied him, God proceeds to thwart
Mozart's ambitions and goals at every turn.  Salieri didn't have to poison
or otherwise sabotage Mozart's career, he tells us, even if he'd wanted to,
which he didn't.  God did it all for him.  To the undeserving Mozart, God
gave genius but withheld its rewards; those, he gave to the devout Salieri,
withholding only the gift of genius, which was what he had really wanted.

Maybe the message came across that way only to me.  I thought there was
some depth to it.  I didn't know enough about Mozart's life (and I suspect
most viewers knew even less) to note most of the historical inaccuracies
except for what I recall was Salieri's input into the completion of the
Requiem, which I knew was fictitious.  (Sussmayr isn't even mentioned.)
Perhaps full historical accuracy can be sacrificed in an admitted story,
the point of which is not to depict Mozart's life, but to remind us again
that God's ways are mysterious and simply cannot be understood.

Walter Meyer