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 [log in to unmask]