Laurence Sherwood writes:

>The movie version, the only one I've seen, of Amadeus showed a rather
>crude sexual predator on the make as "Wolfie" courted Constanza - it
>rather made young Mozart into the image of an 18th-century rock star.

That's interesting, because I didn't get that impression at all.
When we first meet Mozart and Constanza, they are already an "item" and
likely have been intimate with one another.  Mozart behaves no more like
a predator than Constanza.  The only other romantic interest for Mozart
in the movie is the female opera star that Salieri hungers after.  My
perception is that Salieri, not Mozart, is the predator after her body.
Also, she's the predator going after Mozart.  Within the context of the
movie, Mozart was simply a guy that women felt attraction for; they seem
to have been put at ease by his naive and natural personality.

>That image is in stark contrast to a letter Wolfgang wrote to his
>father announcing his engagement to Constanza.  Possibly in the vein of
>justifying his marriage to a woman whom he noted was not terribly clever,
>he said something to the effect of, "I'm 26, and I've never had a woman".

I'm skeptical of placing much value on what children(even adult children)
tell their parents, particularly when the parent is a control freak.  The
offspring in these cases often hide much about their lives in order to
avoid confrontation.

However, let's say that Mozart was portrayed as a predator when he actually
had no women at all well into his 20's.  Not accurate? The bulk of movies
based on books and/or historical drama play very loose with the facts.
Perhaps I enjoyed the movie so much because I didn't have any particular
expectations except that I expected Mozart to be crude and child-like.

Don Satz
[log in to unmask]