It changed the way I looked at music and human relationships.
The film brought to the screen a tale that has been an urban legend for a couple of centuries — that composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Viennese colleague and rival, Antonio Salieri, was responsible for Mozart's death in 1791.It was an intriguing story that I heard at various times when I was growing up. But, like so many other things in life, the story didn't always hold up under scrutiny.
It's been a source of contradictions.
Shaffer's play and the film version that followed told a wonderful story of jealousy and rivalry between two contemporaries, but it may well have been as fictitious as "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," which is a great film about greed among gold prospectors but it's totally fictional.
There is evidence that Mozart and Salieri had a cordial, even friendly, relationship — and there are even hints of it in "Amadeus." Salieri was acquainted with many of the great musicians of his day and was regarded as a great musician himself. In fact, he taught music to Mozart's young son — but he did so years after Mozart's death.
In their correspondence, Mozart and his father wrote of "cabals" of Italians in Vienna who actively sought to derail Mozart's career. But such conspiracies may have been more imaginary than real.
It has been speculated that Mozart himself may have been the initial source of rumors of Salieri's jealousy and conspiratorial inclinations — when Mozart sought a post but was passed over for Salieri.
The episode was re-created in the film, but there was nothing in the movie that suggested Mozart's suspicions of Salieri's actions or motives were aroused by it.
In fact, tales of Salieri's alleged "confession" of his complicity in Mozart's death did not begin to spread until after Salieri's own death.
In the film, it is suggested that Salieri tried to cut his own throat while despondent over Mozart's death more than 30 years earlier — and begged the forgiveness of the long-dead Mozart. He was taken to an asylum, where he "confessed" his role in Mozart’s death to a priest — although the three people who were with Salieri in his last days denied that it ever happened that way.
Another factor that may have contributed to the public's acceptance of the tale was the fact that Germany had undergone a revival of nationalism in the decades since Mozart’s death, which may have led to the de-emphasis of the Italian Salieri and the simultaneous elevation of the Austrian-born Mozart in the public's eye.
That may or may not have been the case. Salieri lived and worked in Vienna for most of his life; in spite of his Italian roots, he was regarded as a German composer by many Germans at the time of his death.
Whatever the reason, so complete was the conversion of the two men's public images that, for the most part, Salieri's work has been forgotten while Mozart's has grown increasingly popular.
True or not, the rumors persisted — and, in 1984, they made for a great cautionary tale, even though I felt, when I saw the film in the theater, that there were gaps in the story.
I found, when I saw the "Director's Cut DVD" many years later, that the restored scenes filled in the gaps nicely. They illustrated, for example, the problems Mozart had earning a living in the conventional way — through teaching music — when what he yearned to do was compose.
The extended version, which was released in 2002, also included scenes that would have caused ratings problems when the film was released theatrically — even though the story made more sense with the deleted material included.
For example, there was a scene in which Mozart's wife visited Salieri to make an appeal on her husband's behalf. Salieri was a member of a panel charged with the task of selecting someone to teach music to the emperor's niece, and Mozart's wife, without her husband's knowledge, came to Salieri with samples of Mozart's sheet music to submit his application for him.
When she refused to leave the music with Salieri, she was forced to admit that Mozart didn't know she was there and that he would be "frantic" if he discovered any of the sheet music was missing. "They're all originals," she confided. "He doesn’t make copies."
Salieri was astonished that all the sheet music in the binder were "first and only drafts of music" which showed no signs of corrections. He was overcome with awe — and envy — that Mozart had been chosen to be the "voice of God."
Deleted from the original theatrical release — at that point — was a segment in which Elizabeth Berridge, the actress who played Constanze Mozart, was enticed to return to Salieri's home that night — alone.
Salieri said he was dining with the emperor the next evening. This was a job that all the composers in Vienna coveted, but "[o]ne word from me, and the post is [Mozart's]," he told Mozart's wife. However, he said, "Some service deserves service in return."
That, he told her, was "the price."
In the expanded version, Constanze returned to Salieri's home, and her breasts were exposed for a few seconds before she was sent to her own home.
At the theaters, the film was rated PG. The inclusion of the deleted nudity almost certainly would have resulted in an R rating — which might have limited the film’s performance at the box office.
But the deleted scene helped to put a fine point on Salieri’s growing alienation from God that was missing from the theatrical release.
And, while they contained no additional nudity or objectionable language, the additional and extended scenes did help to clarify other things that weren't totally clear or given a strong enough emphasis in the originally released theatrical version.
Earlier in the film, when Salieri concluded that Mozart had been intimate with a singer, who happened to be the object of Salieri's unrequited affection, the original version was ambiguous. It showed the singer becoming angry upon being introduced to Mozart’s fiancée — but the extended version went into greater detail, making Salieri's conclusion easier to understand than it was at the theater.
It remained unclear, though, how Salieri intended to kill Mozart. Overworking him — as the film implied — by insisting (as an anonymous benefactor) that he complete the requiem mass (which Salieri intended to pass off as his own at Mozart’s funeral) while he also strove to complete the opera that promised more lucrative, long-term income was an uncertain proposition.
But the film never revealed the method Salieri chose, even though he himself pondered, in his conversation with the priest, the difference between fantasizing about murder and performing it "with your own hands."
History suggests Mozart died of acute rheumatic fever.
If some of the deletions were intended to produce a more favorable rating to help the movie at the box office, they didn't propel "Amadeus" into the top 10 moneymakers of the year. But the movie went on to win eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
And, in one of the most intriguing of contradictions, F. Murray Abraham, the actor who portrayed Salieri in the film, was named Best Actor — instead of the castmate who played Mozart, Tom Hulce.
"Amadeus" didn't ignite a public revival of classical music, but it did have a modest influence on popular music. Austrian pop star Falco had a #1 hit with a song called "Rock Me Amadeus" in the spring of 1986.
