Amadeus (1984) The Saul Zaentz Company 📢 Director: Miloš Forman 💰 Producer: Saul Zaentz 👫 Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Simon Callow, Roy Dotrice, Christine Ebersole, Jeffrey Jones, Charles Kay. 🏆 Awards ceremony: -57th Academy Awards: March 25, 1985. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, California. 🎭 Other films nominated for Best Picture this year: -The Killing Fields. -A Passage To India. -Places In The Heart. -A Soldier's Story. 📕 Plot summary: The film is told in the present day by composer Antonio Salieri (Oscar-winner F. MURRAY ABRAHAM) relating to flashbacks regarding the rise of Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played by TOM HULCE) in Vienna in the early 19th century. Salieri's jealousy of Mozart as well as his lust for Mozart's wife leads him to confessing that he murdered the composer and is committed to a psychiatric hospital where he tells a Catholic priest all about it. 💥 Standout scene(s): Well, apart from Elizabeth Berridge getting her puppies out halfway through the film, my favourite scene was Salieri inviting Constanze back to his place later in the evening so that he can sort her out! 🔑 Facts: -The 57th Academy Awards. -Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, it won 8: Best Picture, Director, Actor (F. Murray Abraham), Screenplay (adapted), Art Direction, Costume Design, Makeup, Sound. -Vincent Schiavelli - probably best remembered for playing the subway ghost in Ghost (1990) - makes a brief appearance near the beginning of the film. This was his second Best Picture role (he was in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest). -The film features a brief scene near the beginning showing full frontal male nudity, which was quite shocking for a film with a PG rating. 🙂 Personal opinion: Loud, brash and overlong. With the exception of F. Murray Abraham's fine performance and Elizabeth Berridge's cleavage, which can only be described as bulgingly monstrous, there was nothing else for me to get excited about. The first hour went by slowly and the next two dragged endlessly. All the switching back-and-forth between the past and the present really felt unnecessary like it was too afraid to let the story flow without the added need for narration from present-day Salieri. Some scenes were just filled with noise and nonsense: all the crap on the stage; the dancing, the operas etc. just slowed the film down and although probably necessary to tell the story, it was tedious. The whole thing felt repetitive and dull. And did I really just watch a bird fly out of a horse's arsehole? Nuh, this just didn't do it for me. Did it deserve the Oscar? ❓QUESTIONABLE. 4/10

Review date: 07 April 2025