Amadeus Rewatched
Nov. 7th, 2019 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI’ve been rewatching, for the first time in many years, Amadeus (directed by Milos Forman, script by Peter Shaffer, based on his play of the same name but with significant differences from same), which I’ve loved ever since seeing it in the cinema as a teen in the mid 80s. And I’m pleased to say it stll holds up.
Now, over the years, I’ve seen objections both from the Mozart and the Salieri angle (i.e. cries of “unfair” by fans of either or both), not to mention the numerous historical inaccuracies, which range from the central premise to details like the way Mozart, and occasionally Salieri, are filmed conducting an orchestra when an opera is staged. The shots Forman uses have subsequently become iconic and to this day are, I venture to guess, the way any conductor in a movie or tv show is depicted, i.e. in central focus, with the audience behind him. This is, of course, not the way it happened; the movie itself pays homage to the actual musical practice of the era at one point when it has Mozart sitting at the pianoforte during the staging of the Magic Flute and conduct from there. (Unless I misremember, Richard Wagner started out still doing that but changed the practice to conducting from the orchestra in Bayreuth as one of the earliest examples of a composer/conductor doing that.) But you see, to me complaints like these are missing the point, not least because Peter Shaffer, who strikes me as having done his research very thoroughly when talking to Milos Forman on the dvd audio commentary, never claimed that he was going for historical accuracy. No “this story is based on true events” or “inspired by true events” disclaimer on the credits for Amadeus, no, ma’am and sir. What it does, though, is use some historical mosaic stones and build a new picture of its own, telling a story of obsession and jealousy and art and hunger and joy and life.
And doing it in a way that’s specifically cinematic. In the audio commentary, Shaffer also is the first writer I’ve listened to who says he prefers the cinema version to his original play, and gives a reason I can thoroughly understand: a movie can use music in a way a play (which isn’t a musical) just can’t. A play can claim Mozart is a genius composer, but has to rely on the audience going along with this because it’s a basic cultural assumption. A movie can use the music as part of the story it tells. And Forman does this so very well. It’s not just a case of picking a “Mozart: Greatest Hits” soundtrack. No, you get transitions like Mozart’s mother-in-law transforming into the Queen of Night from The Magic Flute, the first sight of Leopold Mozart in Vienna already prepares for his later transformation into the Komtur from Don Giovanni and the still later use Salieri will make of his insight into Mozart’s guilt about his father both visually and musically at the same time, you get Salieri again and again swept away by the beauty of the music and the rudely thrown back into the reality of who has been composing it with the soundtrack complimenting F. Murray Abraham’s performance perfectly, you get the extraordinary Requiem sequence where Mozart, dictating the Lacrimosa to Salieri, allows not just Salieri but the audience an in as how this particular bit of music comes into being, by way of Forman separating the choir voices and instrumentations as Mozart dictates, adding them up bit by bit.
It is, as has often been said, a feast for the eyes, with the costumes going all out ancien regime extravaganza. Forman filmed in Prague, starting a trend to this days for historical movies and tv shows being filmed there (rather than in Vienna, or Paris, or whereever) because the architecture fits much better than current day Vienna (or Paris, or whereever) does. (Filming in Prague also meant he could use the actual building in which Mozart conducted Don Giovanni for the first time; it’s used for all the opera sequence, just differently dressed up to look like different theatres.) The various opera settings are luxurious, and as for the food, well, this is a movie unabashedly indulging in food porn (and not just when Salieri is offering “Venus nipples”). All of which has a point to make about the world the characters live in, and about the characters themselves. Salieri, who prides himself on being a moral man and is infuriated by the “obscene child” Mozart, is addicted to various sweet delicacies in an early signal of all he’s suppressing.
It’s one of those works where the main character isn’t the title character - i.e. the main character is Salieri, not Mozart - and yet the title couldn’t be anything else, because “Amadeus” means “loved by God”, and what drives Salieri mad with desire, longing and rage is what he sees as God unfairly bestowing genius on Mozart and giving him, Salieri, only the ability to recognize it, better than anyone else.
In more than one commentary on the film, I’ve seen it pointed out that the whole story is told by the old, mad Salieri which means complaining about historical accuracy is also besides the point since Salieri in this state is hardly a reliable narrator. Which, well, yes and no. I don’t think the narrative implies Salieri is consciously lying to the priest he confesses to/messes with, not least because, and this is a difference to the play, the movie actually shifts perspective: we start firmly in Salieri’s pov, but end up in Mozart’s, with the last half or at least the last third of the film showing us a lot of Mozart centric scenes Salieri, even through his spy the maid, can’t have known about, and which aren’t commented on by his voice over. (I.e. we have no idea whether he tells the priest about this or whether this is what the audience only sees.) It’s also a way the movie adds and counters characterisation. For all that Mozart’s irritating giggle, scatological jokes and childishness are what Salieri in comparison to the music finds so horrifying (to him), the later scenes show that Mozart is actually consistently passionate and deadly serious about his music, and every bit as hard a worker as Salieri. (He parties, but whenever Salieri asks someone - the maid, or Constanze - “is he working”, the answer isn’t just “yes”, but the audience gets to see this is so.) Being a genius doesn’t mean there’s no sweat involved.
If it’s easy to sympathize with Salieri on his basic frustration, not least because from his pov, it echoes Cain’s: he’s working hard, he’s offering all he can, and God just inexplicably favours the other one. It’s the child crying “unfair!” In all of us, and the early sequence where Mozart transforms Salieri’s painstakingly composed pedestrian welcoming march into the Piu andrai from Figaro’s Wedding seemingly without any effort at all just rubs salt into the wound. Who wouldn’t be seething? That Mozart is oblivious to Salieri’s rage and hostility and seemingly doesn’t even notice the feud he’s in is just adding insult.
But like I said: the movie, the longer it goes on, shifts pov and narrative sympathy, especially with the director’s cut restoring the sequence from the play that has Salieri first blackmailing Contanze Mozart for sex if she wants her husband to get the teacher’s job he needs and then humiliating her further by making her undress, then ringing his servant to kick her out. Later, she can just silently cry, finding herself unable to tell her husband what has happened. It’s a cruelty which has nothing to do with Constanze herself but says something very ugly about Salieri and his supposed moral outrage at Mozart (who’s had an affair with the singer Salieri fancied). It’s also the kind of malice notably absent in Mozart, whose own self image might include the conviction of being a better composer than anyone else, but doesn’t see himself as superior or even good in any other regard. When Mozart tells Emperor Joseph II as part of his plea to get Figaro staged “I’m a vulgar man, but my music is not”, he shows more self awareness than Salieri with his conviction of being a good person whom God inexplicably has denied his fondest wish ever does.
(Incidentally: all the other restored bits and pieces in the director’s cut are to my mind easily expendable, they don’t add anything the cinematic release hasn’t already made clear. But the sequence with Constanze is important, not least because it provides a clear reason for her hostility and distrust towards Salieri in Mozart’s death scene, whereas the cinematic release, which had her leaving Salieri without getting blackmailed and with the conviction he’d help her husband out of the goodness of his heart, does not.)
Now, fandom being fandom, I wasn’t surprised upon checking out the AO3 archive that Mozart/Salieri is a thing. My own reading is more that Salieri wants to be Mozart than that he wants to have him, but ymmv, as always. Still, given that the very intense Requiem sequence contains a key line the tv version of Good Omens gave to Aziraphale - “you’re going too fast for me” - and that in Salieri’s mind, he’s actually involved less in a feud with Mozart than in a feud with God, or an attempt to get an answer from God that’s denied to him, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s been some subconcious influence there. Not least because Amadeus is actually very funny throughout, including the last “mediocrities of the world, I absolve you” scene, and yet never loses sight of the humanity of its characters.
In conclusion: still love this movie. Always will.
Now, over the years, I’ve seen objections both from the Mozart and the Salieri angle (i.e. cries of “unfair” by fans of either or both), not to mention the numerous historical inaccuracies, which range from the central premise to details like the way Mozart, and occasionally Salieri, are filmed conducting an orchestra when an opera is staged. The shots Forman uses have subsequently become iconic and to this day are, I venture to guess, the way any conductor in a movie or tv show is depicted, i.e. in central focus, with the audience behind him. This is, of course, not the way it happened; the movie itself pays homage to the actual musical practice of the era at one point when it has Mozart sitting at the pianoforte during the staging of the Magic Flute and conduct from there. (Unless I misremember, Richard Wagner started out still doing that but changed the practice to conducting from the orchestra in Bayreuth as one of the earliest examples of a composer/conductor doing that.) But you see, to me complaints like these are missing the point, not least because Peter Shaffer, who strikes me as having done his research very thoroughly when talking to Milos Forman on the dvd audio commentary, never claimed that he was going for historical accuracy. No “this story is based on true events” or “inspired by true events” disclaimer on the credits for Amadeus, no, ma’am and sir. What it does, though, is use some historical mosaic stones and build a new picture of its own, telling a story of obsession and jealousy and art and hunger and joy and life.
And doing it in a way that’s specifically cinematic. In the audio commentary, Shaffer also is the first writer I’ve listened to who says he prefers the cinema version to his original play, and gives a reason I can thoroughly understand: a movie can use music in a way a play (which isn’t a musical) just can’t. A play can claim Mozart is a genius composer, but has to rely on the audience going along with this because it’s a basic cultural assumption. A movie can use the music as part of the story it tells. And Forman does this so very well. It’s not just a case of picking a “Mozart: Greatest Hits” soundtrack. No, you get transitions like Mozart’s mother-in-law transforming into the Queen of Night from The Magic Flute, the first sight of Leopold Mozart in Vienna already prepares for his later transformation into the Komtur from Don Giovanni and the still later use Salieri will make of his insight into Mozart’s guilt about his father both visually and musically at the same time, you get Salieri again and again swept away by the beauty of the music and the rudely thrown back into the reality of who has been composing it with the soundtrack complimenting F. Murray Abraham’s performance perfectly, you get the extraordinary Requiem sequence where Mozart, dictating the Lacrimosa to Salieri, allows not just Salieri but the audience an in as how this particular bit of music comes into being, by way of Forman separating the choir voices and instrumentations as Mozart dictates, adding them up bit by bit.
It is, as has often been said, a feast for the eyes, with the costumes going all out ancien regime extravaganza. Forman filmed in Prague, starting a trend to this days for historical movies and tv shows being filmed there (rather than in Vienna, or Paris, or whereever) because the architecture fits much better than current day Vienna (or Paris, or whereever) does. (Filming in Prague also meant he could use the actual building in which Mozart conducted Don Giovanni for the first time; it’s used for all the opera sequence, just differently dressed up to look like different theatres.) The various opera settings are luxurious, and as for the food, well, this is a movie unabashedly indulging in food porn (and not just when Salieri is offering “Venus nipples”). All of which has a point to make about the world the characters live in, and about the characters themselves. Salieri, who prides himself on being a moral man and is infuriated by the “obscene child” Mozart, is addicted to various sweet delicacies in an early signal of all he’s suppressing.
It’s one of those works where the main character isn’t the title character - i.e. the main character is Salieri, not Mozart - and yet the title couldn’t be anything else, because “Amadeus” means “loved by God”, and what drives Salieri mad with desire, longing and rage is what he sees as God unfairly bestowing genius on Mozart and giving him, Salieri, only the ability to recognize it, better than anyone else.
In more than one commentary on the film, I’ve seen it pointed out that the whole story is told by the old, mad Salieri which means complaining about historical accuracy is also besides the point since Salieri in this state is hardly a reliable narrator. Which, well, yes and no. I don’t think the narrative implies Salieri is consciously lying to the priest he confesses to/messes with, not least because, and this is a difference to the play, the movie actually shifts perspective: we start firmly in Salieri’s pov, but end up in Mozart’s, with the last half or at least the last third of the film showing us a lot of Mozart centric scenes Salieri, even through his spy the maid, can’t have known about, and which aren’t commented on by his voice over. (I.e. we have no idea whether he tells the priest about this or whether this is what the audience only sees.) It’s also a way the movie adds and counters characterisation. For all that Mozart’s irritating giggle, scatological jokes and childishness are what Salieri in comparison to the music finds so horrifying (to him), the later scenes show that Mozart is actually consistently passionate and deadly serious about his music, and every bit as hard a worker as Salieri. (He parties, but whenever Salieri asks someone - the maid, or Constanze - “is he working”, the answer isn’t just “yes”, but the audience gets to see this is so.) Being a genius doesn’t mean there’s no sweat involved.
If it’s easy to sympathize with Salieri on his basic frustration, not least because from his pov, it echoes Cain’s: he’s working hard, he’s offering all he can, and God just inexplicably favours the other one. It’s the child crying “unfair!” In all of us, and the early sequence where Mozart transforms Salieri’s painstakingly composed pedestrian welcoming march into the Piu andrai from Figaro’s Wedding seemingly without any effort at all just rubs salt into the wound. Who wouldn’t be seething? That Mozart is oblivious to Salieri’s rage and hostility and seemingly doesn’t even notice the feud he’s in is just adding insult.
But like I said: the movie, the longer it goes on, shifts pov and narrative sympathy, especially with the director’s cut restoring the sequence from the play that has Salieri first blackmailing Contanze Mozart for sex if she wants her husband to get the teacher’s job he needs and then humiliating her further by making her undress, then ringing his servant to kick her out. Later, she can just silently cry, finding herself unable to tell her husband what has happened. It’s a cruelty which has nothing to do with Constanze herself but says something very ugly about Salieri and his supposed moral outrage at Mozart (who’s had an affair with the singer Salieri fancied). It’s also the kind of malice notably absent in Mozart, whose own self image might include the conviction of being a better composer than anyone else, but doesn’t see himself as superior or even good in any other regard. When Mozart tells Emperor Joseph II as part of his plea to get Figaro staged “I’m a vulgar man, but my music is not”, he shows more self awareness than Salieri with his conviction of being a good person whom God inexplicably has denied his fondest wish ever does.
(Incidentally: all the other restored bits and pieces in the director’s cut are to my mind easily expendable, they don’t add anything the cinematic release hasn’t already made clear. But the sequence with Constanze is important, not least because it provides a clear reason for her hostility and distrust towards Salieri in Mozart’s death scene, whereas the cinematic release, which had her leaving Salieri without getting blackmailed and with the conviction he’d help her husband out of the goodness of his heart, does not.)
Now, fandom being fandom, I wasn’t surprised upon checking out the AO3 archive that Mozart/Salieri is a thing. My own reading is more that Salieri wants to be Mozart than that he wants to have him, but ymmv, as always. Still, given that the very intense Requiem sequence contains a key line the tv version of Good Omens gave to Aziraphale - “you’re going too fast for me” - and that in Salieri’s mind, he’s actually involved less in a feud with Mozart than in a feud with God, or an attempt to get an answer from God that’s denied to him, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s been some subconcious influence there. Not least because Amadeus is actually very funny throughout, including the last “mediocrities of the world, I absolve you” scene, and yet never loses sight of the humanity of its characters.
In conclusion: still love this movie. Always will.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-08 11:30 am (UTC)I bet you can’tElementary school is definitely too young for this movie, but then again, I got the traditional First Communion gift for Catholic kids that like to read, i.e. Greek Myths in the edition of Gustav Schwab, which means at age 8 I read all about the Greek Gods messing with humans, Atreus serving his brother his carved up kids for dinner, Achilles dragging Hector’s dead body around the Troy, etc. So what do I know?
Anyway, the Requiem scene is one of the best scenes ever, in any movie, and one of the few that to me manage to convey what the act of artistic creation feels like, as well as being the emotional climax of the entire movie, and yes, only possible in the cinematic medium.
(BTW, rewatching, I was also struck by what a great job the mask and makeup people did. On the old age make up for F. Murray Abraham, obviously, which feels organic, not fake or uncanny valley like the way some digital effects these days do, but also on Tom Hulce as Mozart’s health gets worse and worse through the last section of the movie.)
Re: Contanze’s MeToo moment, yes or no: I actually changed my mind on this one, as my initial reaction years ago when I first saw the director’s cut was that I thought the movie was better without it, whereas during this rewatch, it felt right for the reasons I named. Also, Contanze is depicted as pragmatic and practical - without this experience, wouldn’t she have feared alienating Salieri in the final scene? I mean, yes, he’s obviously not fulfilled his promise to her in the cinematic release, but he’s still a rich and influential man, and her husband is very very sick, not able to work. (She doesn’t know he’s dying.) Which means someone will have to pay doctor’s and apothecary bills and their living expenses for the foreseeable future. (She doesn’t trust Schikaneder to come through with the Magic Flute earnings, after all.) So I think without that experience with Salieri, it would have made more sense for her to swallow down any distrust and at least play along on the chance Salieri will help them this time.
I don't think I've ever seen (well, heard) anything else like this, where the transfer to cinema allows special effects in a specifically focused aural sense (instead of primarily the visual sense) to transform the original work. (I don't see a lot of films, mind you, and would be very interested if you knew of any others.)
Hm, not in the sense of stageplay-to-movie script, but I do know some movies that use music as a quintessential part of their storytelling (without being musicals or filmed opera, that is). One of the early early sound movies, Fritz Lang’s M, which btw was also Fritz Lang’s first non-silent movie, not only has the bit for Peer Gynt which Peter Lorre’s character whistles as a key leitmotiv throughout (and one that helps uncover his identity) but also literally takes the bit from Rheingold where Wagner scores the transition between Wotan and Loge going from Walhalla to visiting the dwarves in Nibelheim; in M, Lang uses this particular music for the transition between the police scenes to the scenes in the gangster headquarters. (Which also doubles as a funny meta joke, especially since one of Lang’s biggest silent movie successes was Die Nibelungen.)
Speaking of early sound movies, Chaplin was one of the last holdouts against sound - which only he could have afforded, being Chaplin, so you get City Lights as a silent movie at a point where the rest of Hollywood has already converted to sound, and it’s still a success. But he does use sound in this movie, and music, as a way to enhance the work. (And he later scored his own older movies.)
That Mozart and Salieri scene is one of my favourites, too, and makes me grin each time. (Mind you, I suspect that’s what poor Mozart apologizes in the end for to Salieri.)
Immortal Beloved: well, quite. Only saw it once and thought, it desperately wants to be Amadeus and really really isn’t. No offense, Gary Oldman: you’re doing your best with what the script gives you.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-09 10:28 pm (UTC)Ha. I got the D'Aulaires Greek Myths as a kid, which didn't have Atreus or Achillles and in general toned down the more over-the-top stories, but did have quite a lot of the gods messing with people. And the Charles and Mary Lamb Tales from Shakespeare, which drew the line at Titus Andronicus but did have the great tragedies. And at some point I got my hands on the original (well, translated) Brothers Grimm stories, which were probably the most over-the-top things I read as a child...
Heh, younger!me did not realize for years that young!Salieri and old!Salieri were played by the same actor. The old-person makeup was that good!
That's a good point about Constanze and Salieri. I haven't watched it since either MeToo or being responsible for kid(s) and the associated bills; I should watch it again and see how I feel about it.
(Mind you, I suspect that’s what poor Mozart apologizes in the end for to Salieri.)
(And he should apologize, it was mean! But funny.) Poor Mozart :( I may identify with Salieri, but it's really just painful the way he deceives Mozart. But maybe that's better, that Mozart never knew.
I told D about mentioning humorous bits and he asked, "Did you mention 'Well, there it is!'" which is also something that we say a lot, hee. Which meant he got a whole lecture about the relationship between Emperor Joseph, Maria Theresia, and Frederick the Great :) (I have mostly not been telling him about it, because... there is too much :) )
Argh, I'm going to have to watch it again, aren't I. In particular I haven't watched it again since falling in love with opera; I imagine all those parts will look somewhat different at this point.