Steve Schwartz wrote:

>Shaffer has Mozart apologizing to the nobility.  The nobility were
>generally just as crude as he was.  The unbelievable point is not that
>Mozart was crude, but that the nobility would have taken offense.  If
>Mozart had offended anybody by his speech, it would more likely have
>been the middle class, that group most affected by the Great Awakening of
>Evangelicalism in the 18th century.  This speaks to the issue of exactly
>how much Shaffer knows about Mozart's times.  I don't doubt he's read the
>letters.  I doubt that he knows the cultural context of the letters.

I agree with Steve that much in "Amadeus" flies in the face of the cultural
context of Mozart's time, but this is true of most period films out of
Hollywood.  These depictions of the past are made in the cultural context
of our own time, and while the sets and costumes in the films may have an
"authentic" look about them, what the characters do and say must reflect
the prevailing middle class assumptions of today or movie audiences by and
large would turn away from them.

John Dalmas
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