Janos Gereben wrote:

>It's such a mystery, not Mozart's death, but how two such European artists
>as Forman and the playwright Peter Shaffer could produce this convoluted,
>contrived, overblown Hollywood "spectacle."

I couldn't disagree more.  "Amadeus" is, in my view, one of the most
intelligent movies made in the last decades, a clever, profound, moving
essay on mediocrity, vanity, passion.  It is NOT a movie about Mozart,
this is a common mistake - it is about a fantasy Mozart and a fantasy
Salieri, it is about the tragical relationship between two artists who
destroy each other instead of communicating.  The scene where the moribund
Mozart dictates the Requiem to Salieri is one of the most gripping scenes
I have watched in a cinema.  The whole movie is a wonderful effort and far
from a convoluted Hollywood spectacle.  Shaffer and Forman are Europeans
and the movie is European to the bone.

>Shaffer's better works - "Equus" and "The Royal Hunt of the Sun" - only
>flirt with melodrama, but here, he is pushed over the line without mercy.
>From the opening scene of Abraham's "Stella!"-like screams of "Mozart!,"
>almost nothing feels right, very few lines sound credible, beyond isolated
>moments of Salieri speaking about Mozart's music.  Shaffer used a great
>deal of material from historic documents, from letters to and from Mozart,
>but - while the play in London and New York was better - in the film, even
>authentic words sound wrong.

This is the common mistake that this movie wants to be authentic.  It does
not want to be authentic, it is not about Mozart and Salieri.  It is a work
of art where fictional characters appear who happen to be called Mozart and
Salieri and who own some characteristics of the historical Mozart and
Salieri - but not more.  The movie (and the play!) is a witty and clever
essay about how to deal with mediocrity.

>"Amadeus" (I and II) is not without merit, although few will have my
>luck of hearing its great soundtrack where the preview took place tonight:
>in the Dolby Laboratories screening room.  There, instead of batteries of
>giant speakers blasting you to kingdom-come, the sound is simple, clear,
>clean, "real." In that setting, you may close your eyes to screen out Tom
>Hulce's uncomprehending and incomprehensible "Mozart" and float in the
>music of the real article, Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St.
>Martin in the Fields, with Laszlo Heltay's Academy Chorus and Simon
>Preston's Westminster Abbey Choristers.

I love the soundtrack but I also love Tom Hulce's wonderful acting.  He is
not Mozart, Janos, he is a fantasy over-the-top Mozart - and he deserved
his Oscar nomination.  In the composition scene at the end he acts with an
incredible intensity.

>The singing - engineered and souped-up, as it is - makes a good case
>for the film, although Twyla Tharp's bloated choreography (a Broadway
>"Abduction from the Seraglio" in the court of the Emperor!) would suggest
>listening to the soundtrack on CD. (Yes, there will be a new 2-CD "gold"
>package, 155 minutes, remastered in 24 super bit mapping.)

God, a "Broadway" Abduction - nothing could be more wrong.  Could you
please watch the movie again with unbiased eyes.  To me it was a fine and
entertaining scene from the Abduction which could be seen in more than one
non-Broadway opera houses.

>Still, I wish all that emoting and horseplay wouldn't interfere with
>Suzanne Murphy's bravura Constanza in "Abduction," Richard Stilwell, John
>Tomlinson and Willard White in "Don Giovanni," June Anderson, Gillian
>Fisher and Brian Kay in "The Magic Flute."

Janos, there is more "emoting and horseplay" in good old Mozart than you
obviously want to see.

>The Requiem, of course, is equally majestic as a chamber-music piece or
>as sung by thousands, and here - in the "big sound" treatment - it sounds
>magnificent because of Marriner's exceptional feeling for the work.  If
>only he wrote and directed the film as well!

Karajan already was one conductor too many who tried to be a director.
Milos Forman did a grand job and gave us one of the masterpieces of music
cinema.  Highly recommended.  (When I watched the movie all those years
ago, in a cinema full of non-classical-music-lovers the entire house
watched the whole credits because they wanted to hear Mozart's piano
concert.  Not a bad feat for such a "bad" movie, is it?)

Robert