A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984)

Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Roy Dotrice, Simon Callow, Christine Ebersole, Jeffrey Jones, Charles Kay, Kenneth McMillan, Richard Frank, Cynthia Nixon. Screenplay: Peter Shaffer, based on his play. Cinematography: Miroslav Ondricek. Production design: Patrizia von Brandenstein. Film editing: Michael Chandler, T.M. Christopher, Nena Danevic. Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; music editor: Mark Adler. 

Of all human phenomena, genius may be the most puzzling. What combination of heredity and environment produced a Shakespeare, a Leonardo, a Newton, a Mozart? For the Antonio Salieri of Peter Shaffer's play and the screenplay he based on it, the only answer has to be God. And his jealousy of Mozart leads him to a rejection of God and an attempt to destroy God's creation, whom he sees as a giggling, smutty-minded clown unworthy of the musical talent God has lavished on him. Amadeus is not a biopic; Shaffer called it a "fantasia" based on the lives and careers of Mozart and Salieri, and he plays fast and loose with the details of both. That has disturbed many who know the facts, but the sumptuous entertainment of the movie almost justifies the distortions and prevarications of the story it tells. That it's filled with Mozart's music is certainly most in its favor, and the performances of F. Murray Abraham as Salieri and Tom Hulce as Mozart add to it. Sometimes a beautiful lie is more satisfying than the truth. 

Posted by at
Links: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)