A beautiful 4K UHD transfer brings to life a version of Milos Forman’s film unavailable for over 20 years on disc
In the wake of his suicide attempt–self-suggested “penance” for seemingly causing the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart–former court composer Antonio Salieri uses a final confession to open up about his history with the famed musician, and how Salieri’s bitter jealousy of Mozart’s success grew into a personal vendetta against God.
If you’re new to Milos Forman and Peter Schaffer’s 8-Oscar-winning Epic, you can probably tell from the above that Amadeus isn’t a strict biopic of Mozart. It’s far better than that. Forman and Schaffer’s film (based on Schaffer’s play) uses the lives of Mozart and his suggested historical rival, Salieri, to create a biting, decades-spanning treatise on the nature of genius and creating art.
Rivalry tales were already dramatic staples by the time Shaffer’s play premiered–with Mozart and Salieri’s rivalry already the subject of an Alexander Pushkin play in the 1800s. However, Schaffer’s take on Salieri’s bitter yet genteel enmity towards Mozart in Amadeus distilled the tropes to equally enviable refinement–and the film’s elliptical structure, playing into the highs and lows of jealousy and regret, can find its echoes in everything from Hamilton to The Prestige. As Salieri desperately tries to escape Mozart’s innocuous yet creeping shadow, we wonder what defines an artist’s legacy, the influence they had during their life, or how that life informed their art after their death? In Mozart’s clashes with Austria’s royal court and artistic elite, we question who gets to create that legacy–the artist themselves, those who claimed to know them best, or those who commissioned their art? As Mozart drives himself to ruin in the creation of some of history’s most beloved classical pieces, what becomes more important–creating art that nourishes your spirit, or art that literally puts food in your belly? As Salieri descends into madness trying to understand why a young, jovial buffoon so inexplicably gifted like Mozart reaches heights Salieri’s fruitlessly pursued his entire life, we encounter Amadeus’ most terrifying idea: is talent something cultivated or God-given, and if so, does one’s seeming lack of talent inspire the existential dread that God chose someone else for greatness over you?
Any of these subjects have inspired stunning works of art, speaking to our crippling insecurities and nightmares regardless of our individual artistic ability. In Amadeus, they’re timeless themes expertly and viscerally rendered into a singular, compelling story by Forman and his creative team, one whose resonance has been felt across the years leading up to this stellar new 4K UHD release. Films rarely look this good; using many of the story’s actual historical locations, and a fastidious approach to the film’s lavish production design, and lush symphonic renditions of Mozart classics by Sir Neville Marriner (who refused any alterations to the compositions), Amadeus features the epitome of “craft” from all departments above and below the line.
What’s more, such attention to detail only augments how Schaffer’s screenplay gets at an emotional truth of history, the way it brings the past alive with all of our temporally transcendent flaws, perversions, and desires. The film takes no rosy view of anyone and makes history’s smallest characters as important as the names that have lived on in our minds far beyond the decomposition of their owners in a paupers’ grave. Everyone’s motivations, whether noble or villainous, are deeply relatable and human. There’s Mozart’s wife Constanza (Elizabeth Berridge), fiercely protective of Mozart’s genius yet positioning herself as the only person who can take care of Mozart. There’s also those, like King Joseph II or fellow artist Emanuel Schikaneder, who see themselves as Mozart’s most important patrons, oblivious to how much they’re pushing the mortal limitations of this man. Mozart himself lives so wonderfully in the now, turning in beautiful music but seemingly oblivious to the toll his actions are taking on himself. And finally, there’s Salieri–who sees everyone’s motivations and plays them cruelly against each other, striving for a perfection that remains pointedly out of his grasp.
These aren’t characters just pulled from history: their factual inspiration becomes a platform for all-too-familiar emotional archetypes, whose historical relevance makes them ring all the more true. Schaffer and Forman’s skills as dramaturg and director help Amadeus come to an irresistibly tragic climax–with the film’s best sequences, as Salieri directly assists Mozart in his completion of the Requiem Mass–reveals what a partnership and friendship the two could have had if not for the envy that fueled Salieri against him for decades. If God was indeed speaking through Mozart instead of Salieri, it plays even more as a scene of bemused, benevolent absolution, revealing the empty returns of a life fueled by constant imagined malice or persecution.
This UHD transfer of Amadeus has long been in the works, with many fans curious as to how the film would be represented in possibly the final definitive physical media format. The Theatrical Cut of Amadeus has long been unavailable beyond an initial DVD release; the Extended Cut, put together by Forman in 2002, restored over 20 minutes of footage to the film (and was this reviewer’s first experience with Amadeus), yet at the cost of all but removing the Theatrical Cut from wider circulation. This restoration, undertaken by the Academy Film Archive, Teatro Della Pace, and the Saul Zaentz Company under the supervision of Zaentz’s nephew Paul, rectifies the absence of the Oscar-winning Theatrical Cut by restoring it from the original camera negatives for this release.
The efforts have been well worth the wait: this is easily the best Forman’s film has looked in decades, with a visual richness that surpasses the Extended Cut Blu-ray thanks to the more nuanced tones available with HDR10. The many candlelit scenes are vivid and warm, preserving textures like wooden theater scaffolding, the intricate lacing of period dress, and the stray strands of hair of many wigs in varying degrees of light and darkness without reduction in quality. Colder scenes, such as a final storm-swept funeral, are wholesomely mucky, with natural earth tones and water droplets well represented.
The restored DTS-HD 5.1-Channel sound mix, joined here with dubs in French, German, and Italian as well as Stereo Spanish dubs, intensely immerses audiences in the thrumming vitality of Marriner’s arrangements and the lyrical cattiness of Schaffer’s dialogue. Other background noise–the creaks of actors’ footsteps on stageboards, the mucky crunch of passersby in snowy streets–are also well layered among these aural focal points.
In a strange case of history rhyming once again, it is the only cut of Amadeus included on disc for this release. While the longer Extended Cut is present as an extra on the included digital copy, it’s sadly missing from the UHD format. While I am happy that I’m able to see Amadeus in such high quality and in a cut I’ve never seen before, I don’t agree with the idea of trading one act of historical revisionism for another. There’s immense value in featuring both cuts in conversation with each other–even if it means including the previously available Extended Cut as an accompanying Blu-ray, much like Shout Studios’ extensive release of JFK last year. For one, the loss of the Extended Version also means the loss of Milos Forman’s deeply informative commentary track alongside the restored material.
For what its worth, Warner Brothers preserves the near-feature-length behind the scenes documentary The Making of Amadeus, ported over from its releases of the Extended Cut, alongside a newly-minted 23-minute retrospective special feature Amadeus: The Making of a Masterpiece. This featurette includes new interviews with actors F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Christine Ebersole, and Simon Callow, as well as production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein, and film music historian Jon Burlingame. Their insights into Amadeus’ complex production history are quite entertaining, especially in regards to the struggles of pulling off such a production in occupied Czechoslovakia. It may just be me, but it appears as if these interviews, conducted via Zoom, have had a layer of DNR or AI-sourced upscaling applied to them, giving them an oddly off-putting painterly look especially juxtaposed against the stunning clips of Amadeus’ 4K restoration.
While the merits of what’s excluded and included still remain controversial aspects of this long-awaited release, it’s undebatable that this transfer of Amadeus is certainly one worthy of such a capital-M Masterpiece of cinema. This disc beautifully brings to life the meticulous, moving artistry of Forman and Schaffer’s film, and will likely be the version of Amadeus I revisit for future viewings–even though I’ll definitely be holding onto my previous Extended Cut Blu-ray for completist’s sake.
Amadeus is now available on 4K UHD courtesy of Warner Brothers.
