First, allow me to say that I hate how IMDB removed so many great threads especially on this board. I remember having so
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yolhanson — 14 years ago(April 22, 2011 05:25 AM)
I'm not sure if this constitutes a valid reply, but:
I've always been drawn into the early scene, in which Salieri says to the priest, "Ah, what about this one?" He then plays the intro on the harpsichord, stops playing and starts conducting along with the music in his head. The camera moves to the reverse angle, and we see the priest looking utterly bewildered, in the middle ground behind Salieri's hands. At the end, as the applause in Salieri's mind fades, he turns to the priest and says, "Well?"
The priest could not possibly have heard any of the flashback music in this scene or, indeed, in the entire film.
Most of the film is a flashback in the mind of Salieri. We, as the audience, have to make the leap of logic and imagine that Salieri's audience (the priest) is able to share in the flashbacks. -
FloatingOpera7 — 14 years ago(April 25, 2011 12:01 AM)
The movie begins after Mozart has died. Salieri attempts suicide, feeling severe guilt over the death of Mozart, whom he believes he killed. He is taken to a mental asylum, rather than a prison, because there's no direct proof that he killed Mozart, who died of an illness. The majority of the film are his memories of when Mozart was alive. He is telling the priest the story of his life and how it involved Mozart. The flashbacks are entirely in Salieri's mind and the Priest is only listening to his narration of them. I love how they did this. It's a terrific style and format and movies don't do this anymore.
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jbirtel-1 — 14 years ago(May 16, 2011 03:09 PM)
I wrongly assumed it was Salieri who bought the masquerade costume identicle to Mozart's late father; and only just recently spotted it wasn't.
When I switched to the commentaries; director Foreman confirmed it was Salieri's servant. -
ErgonomicSpliff — 9 years ago(December 02, 2016 10:12 AM)
They are talking about the actual rental, when we see the servant walk out of the shop with the box. Salieri's servant rents the costume. It isn't the servant inside the costume, it is obviously Salieri, as you noted.
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crm22 — 11 years ago(April 05, 2014 09:49 AM)
do you ever think about just how tortured Salieri must have felt over Mozart's death? When he attempts suicide, he's old, but Mozart died when he was still fairly young, so that must have been decades of doing nothing but turning over that thought in his mind. imagine twenty years of constant "you killed Mozart. you destroyed God's beloved." over and over and over. and then he finally snaps
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Chepseh — 11 years ago(September 16, 2014 02:34 PM)
- When Salieri spies on/lusts for the yummy buffet at the Archbishop's festivity, and servants carrying more food get close to noticing this, he acts as if he's examining a candelabra to appear innocent. Cute.
- Salieri likes Caterina despite everything still enough to let her play the title role in his opera we see, "Axur".
- After Salieri is honored with the Emperor's medal for "Axur", the singers leave the stage and Mozart walks to Salieri. While the two men talk, we can see Caterina in the background explicitly stopping and staying to watch them.
- During "Seraglio" and "Figaro", look in the front row - right in the middle sits of course Emperor Joseph, next to him - I think it's the princess Mozart was supposed to teach? - and then next to the princess there is a big golden chair -just- for the tiny lap dop of the princess!
- When old Salieri talks about how he would play the requiem during Mozart's funeral and everyone would think it is his creation, he calls Mozart only "Wolfgang Mozart". Did he leave out the Amadeus deliberately to stress his triumph over the "beloved by god"?
But then I noticed Peter Shaffer also calls him Wolfgang Mozart during the audio commentary on the DVD. Is this maybe a bit of an English thing? Here (Germany) he is either just Mozart or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, never Wolfang Mozart. - During "The magic flute" children in the audience walk towards the orchestra in curiosity but then get send back by some sort of 18th century usher.
- When Salieri spies on/lusts for the yummy buffet at the Archbishop's festivity, and servants carrying more food get close to noticing this, he acts as if he's examining a candelabra to appear innocent. Cute.
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DoctorShemp — 11 years ago(September 28, 2014 06:49 AM)
But then I noticed Peter Shaffer also calls him Wolfgang Mozart during the audio commentary on the DVD. Is this maybe a bit of an English thing? Here (Germany) he is either just Mozart or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, never Wolfang Mozart.
I usually only see the full "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" when it's written down rather than spoken. To my ears, it sounds a tad formal when said aloud, like a bigger introduction than what's usually necessary. -
tsalagicelt — 10 years ago(December 04, 2015 10:06 AM)
You're mostly right, about this era, after the film "Amadeus" was such a sensation to America (and obviously to the rest of the world, since this had a large world-wide appeal, but I can only speak to the situation in America). Even in this post-"Amadeus" era, I still sometimes hear his "full name" without the middle name, but not as often as the true full name with the middle name.
I'm a baby-boomer, so I can also speak to the period from the end of WWII to 1984. The fact is that, prior to the movie's release in 1984, apart from fairly-serious classical music fans, almost no one had heard Mozart's middle name. Even if they had heard it, it didn't register as important and was immediately forgotten.
Even most classical music fans didn't usually use it. In general society, one only said "Wolfgang Mozart" when saying his "full name." Truth be told, the majority of the people couldn't even recall his first name.
Within weeks after the movie exploded on the scene, nearly everyone knew that Mozart's middle name was "Amadeus." By a year or so after the release, when referring to Mozart with other than just his last name, almost everyone added the middle name. The people's memory of the middle name was later exceedingly reinforced by the silly, annoying to many, but very catchy rock song "Rock Me, Amadeus." Since those two events occurred, almost no one has forgotten the middle name, and it's usually included when saying his full name.
Anyway, that's what I offer regarding this from my own experience and memory of the past. -
wingtip71 — 14 years ago(May 23, 2011 01:05 PM)
As far as #10 goes, both "Abduction from the Seraglio" and "Magic Flute" are sung in English in the movie because they were written in German. Since everyone in the movie is supposedly speaking German, they just translated everything that was supposed to be in German into English for the sake of continuity. Both "Don Giovanni" (written in Italian) and the Requiem (in Latin) are sung in their original languages, to show that they were a foreign language from Mozart's mother tongue.
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DoctorShemp — 14 years ago(July 29, 2011 07:33 PM)
Here's a good one:
I'm
pretty
sure that Saleri's servant in the beginning (the tall guy who brings him the doughnuts) is the same servant boy that Salieri has around in the flashback scenes. Just a little something I never thought about