Amadeus (Director's Cut)

Amadeus will probably piss off historians and Wolfgang fans (and Salieri fans? are there any?) due to depicting the characters as basically self-absorbed jerks. Wolfgang also has a girly giggle, is a drunk, seems to put no work into his composing at all, cheats on and disregards his wife, and generally acts like an obnoxious asshole. Absolutely none of this is probably rooted in historical fact, but I guess it makes for a much more colorful movie.

So yeah, rather than the usual dry bio-pic (which is what I was expecting) we get this contrived story about how Salieri plotted to drive Mozart to his grave. All of this goes back to some story that Pushkin totally made up in the 1800s, which was made into a play, then adapted into this movie. Mr. Rooney from Ferris Beuller's Day Off is the Emperor of Austria, which is pretty awesome. Omar Suárez from Scarface plays Salieri and some guy I'd never seen before is Mozart.

Mozart acts like too much of a dick in wherever it is he is from, so he gets packed off to Vienna, where Salieri is the court composer for the Emperor. Salieri is the only one with the musical chops to recognize that Mozart is a genius bringing something wholly new to music, but he's also jealous because Mozart acts like such a cocky little prick and because Salieri can't compose half as well, and then Salieri mentally goes over the edge when Mozart bones this singer that Salieri is sweet on.

The performances are very good and the set pieces and costumes seem pretty fantastic. I say "seem" because I have no idea what people actually wore in 18th century Vienna, but it looks believable to me. The point of real note here is the way Mozart's music is used to tell the story just as much as the acting and dialogue are.

So, it may be libelous as all hell, but it's fun. The Director's Cut version includes 20 minutes of footage, most of which involves Salieri blackmailing Mozart's wife into sexual favors and then losing his nerve at the last minute. The extra footage provides a little more clarity to a later scene where Mozart's wife is really hostile to Salieri, so it's kind of good, but then it also basically serves to sully Salieri's name in the public mind even further for the sake of entertainment, which I guess is kind of lame if you're a Salieri fan (anybody?). The young lady who plays Mozart's wife, one Elizabeth Berridge, is absolutely adorable and personally I think the extra scenes were just an excuse to get her top off. If that's all you are interested in out of this Director's Cut, I have enclosed said mammaries below for your convenience :



There, now you don't have to rent the movie.