Amadeus

Court composer Salieri is both tortured and awed by Mozart’s transcendent musical genius in Peter Shaffer and Miloš Forman’s exuberant and gloriously original film.

  • Director

    Miloš Forman

  • With

    F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Roy Dotrice

  • USA 1984. 161min

  • 70mm

  • Certificate

    PG

Shaffer’s hit 1979 play had been considered unfilmable by some, but with Shaffer himself adapting it alongside Forman, the result was an Oscar-winning triumph. Dramatising the major events of the last decade of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 35 years, the film recounts the poisonous resentment felt by self-proclaimed ‘patron saint of mediocrity’ Antonio Salieri (a powerhouse Oscar-winning performance by Abraham) towards Hulce’s young genius, with Salieri increasingly tormented as his work becomes overshadowed by Mozart’s undeniable brilliance. This is a rare chance to experience Forman’s film on an original 70mm blow-up release print, donated to the BFI National Archive in 2006 by the Saul Zaentz Company. Operas, concertos and choral works can be heard in magnificent 6-track magnetic sound, and presented in sumptuous colour.

Chantelle Lavel Boyea