Period dramas are very often not my favourite type of film – as good as they may be, they are sometimes overly melodramatic and dour at times. After deciding to watch the three-hour epic, Amadeus, I have to admit that this does not fit into the typical period drama mould – it is incredible and probably one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen.
Usually, the leads in these grandiose films are well-known stars. However, two more obscure actors were chosen for the lead roles. F. Murray Abraham, a talented character actor, played the brilliant and calculating Antonio Salieri in one of the greatest screen performances ever. Abraham fully encapsulates the jealousy and animosity Salieri feels towards Mozart. It is also a painfully real performance – who of us has never felt jealousy towards someone else who is considered better at a particular skill than us? His final cries of “I am the patron saint of mediocrity, I absolve you” was scarily chilling and absolutely brilliant. His Academy Award win for Best Actor is one of the greatest in history. Some say he is a one-hit-wonder because of his singular win and nomination – I say he just hasn’t been able to find a role as amazing as Salieri – any actor would have been eternally lucky to have been given such a role, and Abraham just took the performance to an entirely new level.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Tom Hulce gives an equally brilliant portrayal of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Let’s be honest here – in today’s society, the word “Mozart” is used less to describe a person, but instead to make reference to classical music, usually in the negative sense. What this film shows us is that Mozart was anything but boring – he was the equivalent of a hardcore rockstar, and his hard-drinking, heavy-partying ways may be fictionalized to an extent, but Peter Schaffer and Miloš Forman bring the character completely to life and make him one of the most enigmatic figures in cinema history. Both Abraham and Hulce give unbelievable performances in the lead roles, and have a unique chemistry hardly ever replicated in any film.
The success in Amadeus lies in something never seen in period dramas – humour. Too many of these films portray these events as sophisticated, bland and bleak. Amadeus, however, is very dramatic but has a healthy dose of dark comedy injected into it. The energetic performance by Hulce, juxtaposed with the deadpan humour of Abraham, makes this film more lighthearted than anyone would think.
The film also uses modern language and dialects to make the story as accessible as possible – it would have been very easy to simply use period-language to tell the story and satisfy the small demographic of naysayers by having it historically accurate, but there wasn’t really any reason to do so – using language and vocabulary that is familiar to everyone allows the audience to become more engaged with the film, letting us concentrate on following the story and building relationships with the characters instead of losing half the audience with difficult language. It is just another reason why Peter Schaffer is one of the greatest playwrights to ever live.
I will admit I was not expecting to be this entertained by Amadeus. A period epic does not seem all that riveting, but it most certainly was. Funny, dramatic, infinitely interesting and absolutely amazing. Amadeus is one of the greatest films of all time.
The Postmodern Pelican 
Nearly 40 years later and the thought of this film sours me. I first saw the play Amadeus with the great Ian McKellen as Salieri and the surprisingly good Tim Curry as Mozart. It was a glorious evening. I went back a few years later to see English stage actor John Wood and American star Mark Hamill in the roles. Again, wonderful.
McKellen saw Oscar winner Paul Scofield as Salieri in the original production on the West End. When Scofield opted out of the Broadway transfer, McKellen was offered the role. He asked to meet with playwright Peter Shaffer. The acclaimed actor rather boldly told the author that the play was stagnant. The role was exceptional, but the play was a long sit. He would star on Broadway if Shaffer agreed to revise the original script with a couple of dozen laughs placed throughout. Shaffer agreed. The New York production of Amadeus was explosive in its new production and ran far longer than it had in London.
In total, a number of great stage actors played Salieri including McKellen, Wood, Scofield, and Frank Langella. Even film director Roman Polanski played Mozart in Paris. When Miloš Forman was signed to direct the film adaptation, eager audiences awaited the announcement of which wonderful two actors would be hired to recreate what accounted for a high point of their career.
In an interview defending his choice of TV commercial actor F. Murray Abraham (he was then part of a national televised address campaign for Fruit of the Loom underwear in which he played the bunch of grapes), Forman said, ”The role of Salieri is possibly the most flashy stage role of the last decade. It offers great opportunities for broad, stylized, flowery acting. But that wouldn’t do on screen. I felt in the movie all the intensity of Salieri’s obsession had to be reflected in the actor’s face. Murray had that quality from the very first reading.” The audacity of suggesting McKellen is broad and flowery hints more at homophobia than an accurate assessment of his skill.
And so we have a lasting cinematic record of a great play starring a limited actor who tries very hard and is now the poster boy for the story of when an Oscar is awarded for role, not the quality of the performance.