{"id":18192,"date":"2025-07-23T14:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/18192\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T14:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:50:07","slug":"amadeus-review-f-murray-abraham-mesmerises-as-mozarts-lizardly-frenemy-in-milos-formans-masterpiece-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/18192\/","title":{"rendered":"Amadeus review \u2013 F Murray Abraham mesmerises as Mozart\u2019s lizardly frenemy in Milo\u0161 Forman\u2019s masterpiece | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pure gorgeous villainy of F Murray Abraham once again floods the screen, as saturnine and sulphurous as ever, in this new rerelease of Amadeus in its original 1984 theatrical cut. It was adapted by Peter Shaffer<\/a> from his stage-play about the two real-life composers, one a genius, one a nonentity (itself a theme-variation from Pushkin\u2019s 1830 drama Mozart and Salieri), and directed by the great Czech film-maker Milo\u0161 Forman \u2013 his English-language masterpiece, or maybe his masterpiece full stop. Abraham was in his mid-40s when he played this Oscar-winning role; when I first saw it, I thought he would surely dominate the movies for decades to come, no doubt in classical adaptations in which he would be a superlative Iago or Faustus. For some reason, he never again got a starring role to match this, but he did have a terrific scene-stealer in season two of TV\u2019s The White Lotus, in which he did not seem one day older than in this film.<\/p>\n

Abraham\u2019s Antonio Salieri is the court composer of middling saccharine tunes in 18th-century Vienna whose leisured classes gobble his facile work like the chocolate treats he serves to people he wants to seduce. His career and terrible fate are recounted to a solemn priest by the aged Salieri in flashback; he was initially complacently content to regard his success as a reward from God for his bland religious conformity. But \u2013 in the film at least \u2013 Salieri is an envious, malicious mediocrity and hypocritical time-server, corrosively obsessed by the obvious superiority of the gloriously gifted but ill-mannered newcomer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart<\/a>, played here with many a nitrogen giggle by Tom Hulce. Mozart\u2019s work instantly outpaces his and his genius causes Salieri to petulantly turn against God.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Berridge seductively plays Mozart\u2019s kittenishly devoted wife Constanze, or Stanzi; Roy Dotrice is Mozart\u2019s sternly disapproving father; Jeffrey Jones plays the genial, tolerant Emperor Joseph II with elegant aplomb; and Mozart\u2019s tearful maid Lori is played by the teenage Cynthia Nixon, later to find fame as Miranda in Sex and the City. Simon Callow played Mozart on stage for the play\u2019s London premiere opposite Paul Scofield, and was perhaps chagrined to get only a small role here.<\/p>\n

The word \u201cmesmeric\u201d is overused, largely by virtue of being a notorious critics\u2019 euphemism for arthouse films they secretly find dull \u2013 but Amadeus really is mesmeric (as well as deliciously exciting) and watching it again I went into exactly the trance I experienced the first time. Abraham\u2019s Salieri, for all his loathing and rage, is Mozart\u2019s sincerest admirer, electrified and dismayed by the brilliance which has effaced his own forgettable efforts. His face is a picture of elaborate courtesy and evil cunning as he pretends to be Mozart\u2019s friend at court. With pure satanic connoisseurship, Salieri sees how it is not merely Mozart\u2019s naivete but his genius which will be his downfall, how his superbly original work will gradually be rejected by simpering high society, how the resulting poverty and depression will erode his health.<\/p>\n

And so Salieri conceives his own diabolic masterpiece, greater and more audacious than any of his banal musical work: to exploit Mozart\u2019s shock and guilt at the death of his father (which Salieri has divined from the plot of Mozart\u2019s opera Don Giovanni) by arriving at his door like his father\u2019s ghost in a sinister ball-mask, to commission a \u201crequiem\u201d for ready cash which Mozart can hardly refuse. This work will keep alive the psychic wound of despairing guilt which will drive Mozart to his death, music which Salieri plans to pass off as his own at Mozart\u2019s own funeral; an exquisite flourish of dishonest piety.<\/p>\n

There are so many superb set-pieces in Amadeus that picking out any individually is almost impossible, but for me the best is Mozart\u2019s first maladroit and nervous arrival in the emperor\u2019s presence. They are surrounded by variously disapproving or admiring courtiers, all intensely aware of the political significance of a new German-speaking genius at the Habsburg court dominated by Italianate culture. Drama school students should study Abraham\u2019s lizardly contempt which pours out of every frame. Salieri has composed a plonkingly uninspired \u201cmarch of welcome\u201d keyboard piece to be played when Mozart enters and the Emperor, a keen amateur musician, impulsively asks to play it himself as their young guest capers in. What was Salieri\u2019s motive for this? Perhaps he wished to overawe Mozart with this extravagant gesture \u2013 or to establish his own primacy as composer at this vital moment. Or perhaps he wished, with machiavellian spite, to tempt Mozart into some brattish display of ingratitude with which he would disgrace himself.<\/p>\n

But he could hardly have expected the authentic un-political genius of Mozart\u2019s response: having first insultingly demonstrated that he already knew this fatuous jingle by heart after a single hearing by playing it himself \u2013 he then improvises around it, conjuring what is to be a famous aria from The Marriage of Figaro, whose instant catchiness causes the courtiers to gather round. (The film uses Harrison Birtwistle\u2019s original clever reworking of a genuine Salieri composition for this ingenious coup.) Poor Salieri\u2019s face is a mask of rage and pain. His humiliation is almost complete.<\/p>\n

The finishing touch comes when at a masked ball (whose disguises are to inspire his hideous revenge) Mozart calls out for suggestions as to who he should pastiche at the keyboard and the incognito Salieri shouts out his own name \u2013 and Mozart grinningly thumps out a grotesque parody. Again: what is Salieri\u2019s motive? Pure masochism, maybe. A need to find out the truth, to find out what Mozart really thinks of him and what everyone really thinks \u2013 what God thinks, perhaps. To confront the truth about his own lack of talent. There is a kind of integrity in it.<\/p>\n

Salieri\u2019s final grim procession down the chaotic hallway of the psychiatric hospital, proclaiming his status as the patron saint of mediocrity is a chilling bravura moment. A treat for the big screen.<\/p>\n

Amadeus is in UK cinemas from 25 July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pure gorgeous villainy of F Murray Abraham once again floods the screen, as saturnine and sulphurous as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-18192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}