You may not be able to tell apart the 2002 "Amadeus: Director's Cut" from
the 1984 "Amadeus: the Original," even if Milos Forman added 20 minutes to
the film that ran almost three long hours in the first place.

As to the addition, there is no "French plantation scene," a la "Apocalypse
More Now Than Then" - no single item rescued from the cutting-room floor.
Rather, it's bits and pieces, mostly more extended close-ups of F.  Murray
Abraham in his rubber mask as crazy old Salieri struggling with God over
the talent misplaced in vulgar, giggly Mozart.

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."

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.

"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.

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.)

Acknowledgment is in order for Josef Svoboda's wonderful opera sets, and
let the city of Prague take a bow for its impersonation of 18th century
Vienna.  For documentary purposes, Prague's ancient Tyl Theater, where
Mozart conducted the first "Don Giovanni," is an unbeatable venue.

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."

"The Marriage of Figaro" has a terrific cast, in a grand performance:
joining Tomlinson (Bartolo) and White (Antonio), Felicity Lott is the
Countess, Isabel Buchanan sings Susanna, Anne Howells is Cherubino; Samuel
Ramey (at the very top of his career) is Figaro and Richard Stilwell is the
excellent Almaviva.

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!

Janos Gereben/SF
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