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those ignorant of serious music that they
couldn’t possibly be missing much.
The exception has long been Amadeus,
Milos Forman’s awesome masterpiece
about Mozart and his contemporary
composer, Antonio Salieri.
In a way, of course, the film wasn’t
truly about Mozart at all, but about
Salieri and God. In Peter Shaffer’s
brilliant play, which he adapted for the
screen, Salieri is a youth with a powerful
vocation for music. He offers God
a bargain: if the Lord will make him
a musician, he will offer his industry,
his piety, his extreme humility and
his chastity. God comes through, but
Salieri doesn’t deliver his end of the
bargain. God’s vengeance is terrible: he
denies Salieri the talent to accompany
his creative urge, and gives it instead to
Mozart, a vulgarian who has nothing
to recommend him, beyond the fact
that he sets notes to paper as though he
were taking dictation from the Creator
himself. God’s ultimate curse is to leave
Salieri just enough talent so he may realize
how much better Mozart’s music is
than his own, and a long life of watching
his own music forgotten while Mozart’s
is praised — appropriately enough — to
the skies.
I have watched this wonderful film
countless times, first on VHS, and then
on the original DVD. There is always
more to discover, and of course there
is the music. When Warner brought
out this director’s cut, with an extra
20 minutes of material, I was intrigued.
The editing of Amadeus is nothing less
than brilliant. Would “undoing” some of
that editing by picking up deleted scenes
make it a better film, or a poorer one?
I feared the latter. Still, Milos Forman
says that the film on this DVD is actually
the cut he wanted to put out, but
that producer Saul Zaentz persuaded
him that people wouldn’t sit still for
a three hour film about 18th Century
musicians.
I’m not certain Zaentz was right, but
then again I’m not sure Forman was right
either. Of course, anyone who has seen
a film dozens of time will resist change,
but some of the new scenes disturbed
me.
Consider the scene when Katerina
Cavalieri, the pretty blonde soprano
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Salieri relishes, plays her role in Mozart’s
Abduction from the Seraglio. Immediately
after, when it is revealed that Mozart is
engaged to marry Constanze, Katerina
smashes her bouquet across Mozart’s
face, thus revealing to a horrified Salieri
that “He’d had her, he’d had my darling
girl.” The scene is one of the best-articulated
I can recall seeing in a movie, with
editing worthy of a place in film school
curriculums. The new version includes
an extended scene in Katerina’s dressing
room after the opera, in which Mozart
attempts to explain the unexplainable.
The scene is pointless and the impact is
greatly diminished.
There is worse to come. When
Constanze comes to see Salieri with a
sheaf of Mozart’s compositions, hoping
to get him a teaching post, Salieri turns
the pages, and hears in his head piece
after piece of divinely-inspired music.
You may recall that, when Constanze
asks him whether he will help, he turns
on his heel.
That was in the original. The uncut
version plays totally differently. Salieri
offers Constanze his aid if she will, in
return, come back that evening for a
sexual tryst. “That is the price you
pay,” he says harshly. That evening, not
sure whether she will indeed return,
he offers God another bargain: if He
will grant Salieri just one masterpiece,
Salieri will help Mozart without condition.
When Frau Mozart arrives and
begins to strip off her clothes, Salieri
recognizes her arrival as God’s refusal
of his offer. He summons a servant to
show the half-naked woman to the door.
To be sure, the added scene goes a long
way to explaining Constanze’s enmity to
Salieri, but it puts a hard edge on Salieri’s
personality that I found downright disturbing,
because there is nothing else in
the film to suggest it.
The third extended scene shows
Mozart hoping to make money tutoring
students. He shows up in a household full
of dogs whose reaction to music is not
what any musician could wish. The scene
is very funny, but it is played as farce, and
none of the rest of the film is. It properly
belongs in some other movie.
Some of the additions are happier.
Several opera segments are lengthened,
and I’m not about to complain. Also
slightly lengthened is the stupendous
scene showing the dying Mozart composing
the Confutatis from his Requiem
Mass while Salieri takes dictation.
Best of all is the enhancement of both
image and sound. The colors are better
reproduced, though the film is slightly
dark and I found myself boosting the
brightness a touch. The full picture’s
2.35:1 ratio is shown, with some scenes
so wide that straight lines actually look
convex. The sound is far superior to the
original DVD’s grey soundtrack, with
its unconvincing stereo effect.
I’d like to add a word about the
French-language soundtrack on this version.
Though I loathe most dubbed films
with a passion, the dubbing on Amadeus
was astonishingly good. F. Murray Abraham’s
Salieri was as good as the original
(rumor was he had dubbed it himself),
and Elizabeth Berridge (Constanze) no
longer had her pronounced New York
accent. For this extended version the dub
had to be redone, and it is much poorer,
with the usual overacting that afflicts
nearly all dubbed movies.
The set includes a second disc with
extra material that is worth the cost all by
itself. It explains the unfortunate choice
of Elizabeth Berridge as Constanze: the
original actress chosen, Meg Tilley,
injured herself in a soccer game the day
before shooting was to begin. It details
the difficulties of shooting in what was
then a closed Communist society. And
it is replete with delicious anecdotes.
When the crew first visited Prague’s
Tyl Theatre, where Don Giovanni was
premiered, and where the Don Giovanni
scene was to be filmed, Forman and
Zaentz realized they had lost Peter
Shaffer, the author. They found him in
the hall, weeping.
But I’m of two minds about the extra
scenes. I wish they had been put in an
“outtakes” section, as such scenes often
are. Alternatively, I wish there were an
option to see the film with and without
the restored scenes, a possibility that is
within the reach of DVD technology.
When Mozart runs into opposition
on his opera The Marriage of Figaro, he
tells Salieri, “It is perfect as it is. I can’t
rewrite something that is perfect.” I wish
Forman had taken that line to heart.