reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/01/84)
In Vienna, the music capital of Europe in the mid 18th
century, Antonio Salieri reigned supreme. Despite humble
background, he had become the court composer for the Emperor of
Austria. His music was greeted with the most extravagant praise
and he was lavished with honors. Yet nowadays, no one remembers
Salieri. Instead, Mozart is acclaimed as the genius of music
from that period. What if Salieri, alone among his
contemporaries, had foreseen his own eclipse? How would he have
felt and what would he have done? Might he actually have
murdered Mozart, as disreputable rumor suggested?
This is an interesting enough subject for a work, but Peter
Shaffer had an additional twist. What if Salieri had earlier
made a bargain with God, a good life in return for acclaim as a
composer? How would Salieri have felt to see his bargain
twisted, to understand that, popularity or no, he was no more
than a passing fashion, while God had given Mozart the gift of
genius? How would Salieri have felt when he realized that this
divine gift had not only been denied him, but had been given not
to a saint, but to a childish, vulgar man with few redeeming
features?
The unfairness of God is the subject of "Amadeus", in its
incarnations as a play and as a film. Normally, we are shown the
Devil as the tricky bargainer, ready to swindle you over the
misplacement of a word. Here God takes that role, an infinitely
more disturbing prospect. What if we can bargain with God, and
what if he is really trying to cheat us? I find it's premise so
interesting that I could not help but be disappointed with the
failures of the play. Shaffer and Milos Forman, the film's
director, have substantially reworked the script, but "Amadeus"
still fails to take full advantage of the good idea at the core.
The problems are different, but are still present.
In the play, Shaffer failed to show the full irony of the
juxtaposition of Mozart's genius and vulgarity. Forman has
solved this problem, but only at the cost of letting the work's
premise slip through his fingers. Shaffer failed to paint Mozart
convincingly. Forman forgets that this is really Salieri's
story, not Mozart's. Two thirds of the way through the film,
Forman shifts gears into a fairly standard struggling artist
biography, and the film never really recovers. A final attempt
to mutate the portrait of Salieri from a man angry at God to a
bumbling mediocrity who cannot even succeed at revenge fails
completely. We are no longer presented with Salieri in dubious
victory over God, but with Salieri mumbling irrelevancies about
mediocrity. The theme disappears completely.
In the absence of a strong center, one must get the
satisfaction one can from the remaining elements. Fortunately,
there is a lot of good stuff crammed around the edges. As is his
wont, Forman has cast the play with relatively unknown
performers. They are largely excellent. F. Murray Abraham does
a fine job as Salieri, both old and young. I can't help but
wonder, though, what the film would have been like with Ian
McKellan or Paul Scofield, both of whom won great acclaim in the
part on stage. Tim Hultz, best known previously for his role in
"Animal House", eventually succeeds in convincing us of the
contradictions of "Amadeus"'s portrait of Mozart. There are a
few rather conventional performances from the supporting cast,
but most of them do quite well and one or two of them are
brilliant.
The photography is beautiful, and the costumes and art
design ravishing. "Amadeus" was filmed mostly in Prague, which
still preserves many buildings from the 18th century. The
fabulous theaters and palaces add immeasurably to the film's
impact. Shaffer's script, while a failure in deepest meanings,
is witty and agreeable. The score is one of the finest ever
written, not surprising since it is almost entirely Mozart's own
works. "Amadeus" is a film to be seen in the best theater
possible, with a large screen to render its visual beauties, and
a Dolby stereo system to render the aural ones. (If I needed any
evidence of Rex Reed's utter lack of critical judgement and
taste, I got it from his contention that there was too much of
Mozart's music in the film.)
Despite its failures, I enjoyed "Amadeus" very much. It's a
bit long, but never dull, and Milos Forman is either too good or
not good enough a director to really botch it up. Had I not
already been terribly disappointed by the play, though, I think I
would have been much less satisfied with the film. Forman and
Shaffer solved a few of the play's problems, but only at the cost
of introducing new ones. "Amadeus" is an interesting film, well
worth seeing, but not a triumph, and it represents the probably
final failure of Shaffer to make this story work.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher