Amadeus

Plot

In 1823, aged composer Antonio Salieri attempts suicide and is committed to a psychiatric hospital. He claims that he murdered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Father Vogler, a young Catholic priest, encourages Salieri to confess his sins before God. After Vogler fails to recognize him, Salieri plays three old melodies to jog his memory. Vogler cannot recognize the first two (which Salieri wrote) but is relieved to recognize the third (Eine kleine Nachtmusik) at once. Salieri peevishly reveals that Mozart wrote it.

Salieri begins his confession by saying he grew up hearing stories about the child prodigy Mozart. In his youth, Salieri was in love with music but was forbidden by his father to study the craft. Salieri proposed that if God made him a famous musician like Mozart, he would give God his faithfulness, chastity, and diligence. Salieri's father soon dies, which he interprets as a sign that God has accepted his vow. By 1774, Salieri became court composer to Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II in Vienna. However, he has enough taste to know that Emperor Joseph has no ear for music, though Salieri prides himself on the popularity of his work.

After their first meeting, Salieri understands that Mozart is the better composer, but is shocked to learn that Mozart is obscene, immature, and dissolute. He also learns that Mozart never needs to pen a second draft of his music, implying divine inspiration. Salieri cannot fathom why God would choose a reprobate like Mozart as his earthly instrument. Salieri renounces God and vows to take revenge on him by destroying Mozart.

Mozart's work is ahead of its time, and he struggles to find employment in Vienna. He spends himself into debt, alarming his wife Constanze. Salieri and Mozart bond over their shared contempt for Emperor Joseph's lack of taste, but Mozart is unimpressed by Salieri's populist work, which causes Salieri great pain.

Mozart boldly adapts the subversive play The Marriage of Figaro into a comedic opera. Salieri rejoices, thinking Mozart's career is ruined, but Mozart stuns Salieri by convincing the Emperor to approve the project. The Emperor, however, finds the opera boring, and it is soon canceled. Eventually, Mozart's father, Leopold, dies. In response to criticisms and his grief, Mozart composes Don Giovanni, a dark, serious opera. Salieri is entranced but vindictively gets that opera canceled, too. Renouncing Vienna's artistic establishment, Mozart agrees to write The Magic Flute for a commoners' theater against Constanze's wishes.

Production

Kenneth Branagh wrote in his autobiography Beginning that he was one of the early finalists for the role of Mozart, but was dropped from consideration when Forman decided to make the film with an American cast. Forman declined to have Tim Curry, who originated the role of Mozart on Broadway, reprise his role; however, he allowed Curry to screen-test for Salieri instead at Shaffer's suggestion. Mark Hamill, who replaced Curry as Mozart towards the end of the stage play's original Broadway run, was rejected by Forman because of his association with the character Luke Skywalker, believing audiences would not accept him as the composer.

Forman invited Hulce to a "get-acquainted session" in late 1982. However, Hulce was instructed not to study conducting, as the modern discipline is different than in Mozart's time, when conductors primarily kept time and often played along at the keyboard. Meg Tilly was cast as Mozart's wife Constanze, but she tore a ligament in her leg the day before shooting started. She was replaced by Elizabeth Berridge. Simon Callow, who played Mozart in the original London stage production of Amadeus, was cast as Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of The Magic Flute.

The film was shot on location in Prague for seven months, with primary filming ending in July 1983. and in Kroměříž at Kroměříž Castle. Forman was able to shoot scenes in the Estates Theatre in Prague, where Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito debuted two centuries before. Several other scenes were shot at the Barrandov Studios and Invalidovna building, a former hôtel des invalides, built in 1731–1737.

Forman collaborated with American choreographer Twyla Tharp for scenes that featured recreations of Mozart and Salieri operas.

The movie presented high realism by using candlelight inside the Estates Theater in Prague and filming full-length, authentic opera scenes.

Tom Hulce reportedly used John McEnroe's mood swings as a source of inspiration for his portrayal of Mozart's unpredictable genius. He claimed he did not find Mozart's signature laugh until he downed a bottle of whiskey.

Reception

Critical reception

Amadeus holds a score of 90% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 160 reviews, with an average rating of 9.1/10. The site's consensus states: "Amadeus' liberties with history may rankle some, but the creative marriage of Miloš Forman and Peter Shaffer yields a divinely diabolical myth of genius and mediocrity, buoyed by inspired casting and Mozart's rapturous music." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 87 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Giving the film four-out-of-four stars, Roger Ebert acknowledged that it was one of the "riskiest gambles a filmmaker has taken in a long time", but added that "there is nothing cheap or unworthy about the approach", and ultimately concluded that it was a "magnificent film, full and tender and funny and charming". Ebert later added the film to his Great Movies list. Peter Travers of People magazine said that "Hulce and Abraham share a dual triumph in a film that stands as a provocative and prodigious achievement." Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic put it on his list of films worth seeing.

In one negative review, Todd McCarthy of Variety said that despite "great material and themes to work with, and such top talent involved," the "stature and power the work possessed onstage have been noticeably diminished" in the film adaptation. The film's many historical inaccuracies have attracted criticism from music historians.

Box office

The film grossed $52 million in the United States and Canada and by November 1985, while still in theatres overseas, had grossed over $90 million worldwide to date.

Accolades

The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won eight, including Best Picture. At the end of the Oscar ceremony, Laurence Olivier came on stage to present the Oscar for Best Picture. As Olivier thanked the academy for inviting him, he was already opening the envelope. Instead of announcing the nominees, he simply read, "The winner for this is Amadeus." An AMPAS official quickly went onstage to confirm the winner and signaled that all was well before Olivier then presented the award to producer Saul Zaentz. Olivier (in his 78th year) had been ill for many years, and it was because of mild dementia that he forgot to read the nominees. Zaentz then thanked Olivier, saying it was an honor to receive the award from him, before mentioning the other nominees in his acceptance speech: The Killing Fields, A Passage to India, Places in the Heart and A Soldier's Story. Maurice Jarre won Best Original Music Score for his scoring of A Passage to India. In his acceptance speech for the award, Jarre remarked "I was lucky Mozart was not eligible this year".

The film is one of the few Best Picture winners never to enter the weekend box office top 5 after rankings began being recorded in 1982. The film peaked at No. 6 during its 8th weekend in theaters. Saul Zaentz produced both Amadeus and The English Patient. In 2006, Writers Guild of America West ranked its screenplay 73rd in WGA’s list of 101 Greatest Screenplays.

Historicity

From the beginning, writer Peter Shaffer and director Miloš Forman both were open about their desire to create entertaining drama only loosely based on reality. Forman admitted that neither the play nor the film was ever "intended to be a documentary", calling the film a "fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri". The idea of animosity between Mozart and Salieri was popularized by Alexander Pushkin in his 1830 play Mozart and Salieri, where Salieri murders Mozart on stage. The play was made into the 1897 opera Mozart and Salieri by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, which in turn had its first screen adaptation by silent-film director Victor Tourjansky in 1914.

In real life, Salieri and Mozart "were in constant contact" during their years in the Vienna music scene and may even have been friends, although they were also professional rivals. The claim that Salieri killed Mozart has been generally debunked; in 1981, Harold C. Schonberg wrote that "medical men who have studied the reports of Mozart's final illness [were] almost unanimous in saying that Mozart died of kidney failure." In 1785, Mozart and Salieri co-wrote the cantata Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, which was rediscovered many years after the film's release; Mozart scholar Ulrich Leisinger admitted that the piece was "not great". Salieri "frequently conducted Mozart's work" and gave Mozart's son music lessons after Mozart's death. In addition, Alex Ross wrote that Mozart and Salieri's relationship improved after the death of Emperor Joseph II, a supporter of Salieri. Schonberg said that "we will never know ... the exact nature of the relationship between the two men."

However, the film's narrative was indirectly inspired by real-life rumors about Salieri killing Mozart. These rumors were prevalent enough that Rossini joked about them to Salieri's face when meeting the man in 1822. It was said that Salieri confessed to the murder in 1823, shortly before his death and the same year he attempted suicide, although the claim is generally dismissed as either pure rumor or "the ramblings of a man suffering from dementia", and Ignaz Moscheles wrote that Salieri personally denied the rumor to him on his hospital deathbed. In 1824, an anonymous detractor passed out leaflets at a Beethoven performance repeating this claim.

The claim that Salieri saw Mozart as a competitor has more historical support. In a biography published shortly after Salieri's death, which was purportedly based on Salieri's now-lost draft autobiography, Ignaz von Mosel wrote that Salieri respected Mozart, but was jealous of him. Salieri also did, in fact, criticize Mozart's dissipated lifestyle. Harold Schonberg noted that although Salieri had a reputation for being generous to composers who were down on their luck, he never helped Mozart.

Director's cut

Amadeus premiered in 1984 with an MPAA rating of PG and a running time of 161 minutes. In 2002, director Miloš Forman assembled an R-rated version (marketed as the "Director's Cut") with nearly 20 minutes of restored footage. From 2002 to 2025, this was the only widely available release. A restoration of the version released in theaters (marketed as the "Theatrical Cut") was released in 2025.

It is not clear whether Forman's Director's Cut represents his actual artistic vision. Forman defended the 20 minutes of cuts in his 1993 autobiography Turnaround, and repeated his defense in the 1995 supplemental material for Pioneer's deluxe LaserDisc. The Director's Cut has come under severe criticism, in part because it displaced the original theatrical edition, instead of complementing it. Rian Johnson argued that the Director's Cut "is bizarrely a sort of inverse master class in editing: It shows exactly why the cuts were made in the first place & how they made the film work." Roger Ebert noted that the cut was part of a broader wave of directors' cuts on home video, which he characterized as a "mixed blessing." The A.V. Club's Tasha Robinson noted that most of the additional sequences were either redundant or unnecessary, and broke up the "lively flow between scenes" that marked the theatrical edition's "superb" editing."

On the other hand, critics have recognized the merits of some of the additional scenes. Ebert and Robinson agreed that the added scenes better explained Constanze's hatred for Salieri, although Robinson questioned whether that subplot actually required a scene with the character topless. Jordan Hoffmann (Foreign Policy) added that the subplot featuring Christine Ebersole as a Salieri-obsessed singer who has sex with Mozart, was "splendid."

More broadly, while promoting the Director's Cut, Forman argued that the unlimited running time of home video provided a better environment for the deleted scenes:When you finish a film, before the first paying audience sees it, you don't have any idea. You don't know if you made a success or a flop when it comes to the box office. And in the '80s, with MTV on the scene, we are having a three-hour film about classical music, with long names and wigs and costumes. Don't forget that no major studio wanted to finance the film, for these reasons. So we said, "Well, we don't want to be pushing the audience's patience too far". Whatever was not directly connected to the plot, I just cut it out. But it was a mutual decision [to limit the running time]. I wanted the best life for the film myself... Well, once we are re-releasing it on DVD, it doesn't matter if it is two hours and 40 minutes long, or three hours long. So why don't we do the version as it was written in the script?In 2024, Saul Zaentz Co. announced that in conjunction with the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Film, it had completed a 4K restoration of the theatrical version of Amadeus, to celebrate the film's 40th anniversary. Restorers noted that Paul Zaentz, Saul's nephew and successor, personally preferred the Theatrical Cut to the Director's Cut. The distributors issued an Ultra-HD Blu-ray of the restored Theatrical Cut on February 25, 2025.

Music

Film credits

Music conducted and supervised by Neville Marriner

Music coordinator: John Strauss

Orchestra: Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner

Choruses

Academy Chorus of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by László Heltay

Ambrosian Opera Chorus, conducted by John McCarthy

The Choristers of Westminster Abbey, conducted by Simon Preston

Instrumental soloists

Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, K. 482: Ivan Moravec

Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466: Imogen Cooper

Adagio in C minor for Glass Harmonica, K. 617: Thomas Bloch with The Brussels Virtuosi, conducted by Marc Grauwels

Parody backgrounds: San Francisco Symphony Chorus

"Caro mio ben" by Giuseppe Giordani: Michele Esposito, soprano

Original soundtrack recording

The soundtrack album reached No. 1 in the Billboard Classical Albums Chart, No. 56 in the Billboard Popular Albums Chart, has sold over 6.5 million copies and received thirteen gold discs, making it one of the most popular classical music recordings of all time. It won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Album in 1984.

Disc 1

Mozart: Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183, 1st movement

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: Stabat Mater: "Quando corpus morietur" and "Amen"

Early 18th Century Gypsy Music: Bubak and Hungaricus

Mozart: Serenade for Winds in B-flat major, K. 361, 3rd movement

Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384, Turkish Finale

Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A major, K. 201, 1st movement

Mozart: Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat major, K. 365, 3rd movement

Mozart: Great Mass in C minor, K. 427, Kyrie

Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, K. 364, 1st movement

Disc 2

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, K. 482, 3rd movement

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492, Act III, "Ecco la Marcia"

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492, Act IV, "Ah, tutti contenti"

More Music from the Original Soundtrack

In 1985, an additional album with the title More Music from the Original Soundtrack of the Film Amadeus was issued containing further selections of music that were not included in the original soundtrack release.

Mozart: The Magic Flute, K. 620, Overture

Mozart: The Magic Flute, K. 620, act 2, Queen of the Night aria

Mozart: Masonic Funeral Music, K. 477

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, 1st movement

Antonio Salieri: Axur, re d'Ormus, Finale

Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade No. 13 for Strings in G major), K. 525, 1st movement, arranged for woodwind octet by Graham Sheen

Mozart: Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299, 2nd movement

Mozart: Six German Dances (Nos. 1–3), K. 509

Giuseppe Giordani: "Caro mio ben"

Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384, Chorus of the Janissaries (Arr.) and "Ich möchte wohl der Kaiser sein" ("Ein deutsches Kriegslied"), K. 539 (Arr.)

The Masonic Funeral Music was originally intended to play over the closing credits, but was replaced in the film by the second movement of the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor (included on the Original Soundtrack Recording).

Director's Cut soundtrack

In 2002, to coincide with the release of the Director's Cut of the film, the soundtrack was remastered with 24-bit encoding and reissued with the title Special Edition: The Director's Cut – Newly Remastered Original Soundtrack Recording on two 24-karat gold CDs. It contains most of the music from the previous two releases, but with the following differences.

The following pieces were added for this release:

Salieri's March of Welcome turned into "Non più andrai" from The Marriage of Figaro (includes dialogue from the film)

Adagio in C minor for Glass Harmonica, K. 617 (from a new 2001 recording)

The following pieces, previously released on More Music from the Original Soundtrack of the Film Amadeus, were not included:

Masonic Funeral Music, K. 477

Six German Dances (Nos. 1–3), K. 509

Legacy

A TV series adaptation of the original Shaffer play, called Amadeus, starring Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany was filmed in 2024 and was aired on Sky TV in December of 2025.

The pink wig worn by Mozart is in the permanent exhibition of the Acadian Museum at the University of Moncton. The wig was created by Paul LeBlanc, who won an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for this movie in 1985.