Robert Peters:

>...the movie is NOT about the historical Mozart.

Indeed it isn't, but for many people who saw it, it depicted real events
and, as yet another Hollywood rewriting of history, became the popular
version of Mozart's life.  As it won the best film Oscar in 1984, it did
much better business than it might otherwise have done, especially for
those who regard an Oscar as a measure of quality and not as a marketing
tool.

John Schmitt told of discovering opera as a result of seeing "Amadeus".
A friend who played Constanze in an amateur production of it discovered
Mozart's music and CM in general.  So the news is not all bad.

I much prefer the work of the other Shaffer, Anthony, who wrote, among
others, the wonderful "Sleuth" (Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Alec
Cawthorne, 1972).  It contained one of the most hellish ideas I've ever
seen - a very large jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were all white.

Richard Pennycuick
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