Theory about the true tragedy of the movie
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Amadeus
pip-68017 — 9 years ago(April 10, 2016 12:34 PM)
I noticed several times throughout the movie they make a point of showing that Salieri has a love of desserts. When he shares the "nipples of Venus" with Mozart's wife, when he is attempting to take some sweets from the table in the room where Mozart and his girlfriend are hiding when we first meet them, and in the very beginning of the film when the caretakers in the insane asylum know he loves desserts and attempt to get him to let them in with a bribe of his favorite dessert. There may have been 1 or 2 other instances i'm forgetting.
My point is- this seems too intentional and frequent to just be random or for comedic value. Why would this be written into the script? Considering that Salieri appears to truly enjoy these desserts, and Mozart's wife complements him on the nipples of Venus which Salieri says he made himself with the kind of admiration Salieri craves so badly for his music, was the movie trying to subtly say that the real tragedy is that Salieri's true calling was baking/cooking/food and not music? That he failed to eclipse Mozart becuase he had the wrong passion?
I know it sounds sort of ridiculous and silly at first but honestly its something that's always stuck out at me when watching this film. Is the real irony of the story that God did answer his prayers and give him talent, but he simply mistakenly thought it was supposed to be music while it was these desserts that keep popping up all along?
Weird theory I know but I can't help but think there was something intentional there. Anyone else think or notice this? Does this sound plausible? -
Suzume-san — 9 years ago(April 28, 2016 09:56 AM)
It's also one of the few biographical details that's actually true; the historical Salieri had a love of sweet things. And if that's your fancy, Vienna is the place to be! City of Sachertorte, cream cakes, ices and other sticky delights.
-
SVU14_1 — 9 years ago(May 21, 2016 09:23 PM)
Salieri's true calling was baking/cooking/food and not music?
It's a bit of a stretch. In the movie, we see him eating all the time (mostly sweets) but we don't see him cooking. He was wealthy so it's like he bought all of his food or had servants prepare them for him.
He was a musician and composer but he had an inferiority complexwhich was his major issue. -
osgrath-1 — 9 years ago(June 06, 2016 05:34 PM)
In fact, you bring the discussion back to the original title of this thread - theory about the true tragedy of the movie.
In fact, the play and the movie are not about Mozart and Salieri as composers. First of all, Salieri was anything but inept: his music still gets performed today, but certainly not with the frequency of Mozart's. He was the top dog in Vienna at the time. It is very doubtful that he had any hand in Mozart's death. A lot of the conflict was simple royal court intrigue: Italian composers dominated the Vienna music scene at the time, and a kid coming from the boondocks (Salzburg) and making a big impact in the big city felt very threatening to them. However, Salieri had a long and fruitful career as a composer, conductor and teacher (pupils included Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt).
But the point that Peter Schaeffer makes with the play is envy that Salieri, the character, felt for this young genius, and how that envy not only had evil effects on those around him but drove Salieri into madness. In truth, Salieri suffered from dementia in the last year of his life (he lived to age 75), but he did not go insane. We call this a literary device. The play does not attempt to be historically accurate, only to provide psychological insight into what envy can do to a person - people that compare themselves to others become either vain or bitter.
Whether Salieri had an unhappy attraction to sweets is only a portion of the character that Schaeffer drew. As someone noted earlier, Vienna is hardly a bad place to satisfy a sweet tooth. I just restocked my supply of Manner Schnitten the other day (at a local deli, I need to get back over there). -
osgrath-1 — 9 years ago(June 06, 2016 05:35 PM)
In fact, you bring the discussion back to the original title of this thread - theory about the true tragedy of the movie.
In fact, the play and the movie are not about Mozart and Salieri as composers. First of all, Salieri was anything but inept: his music still gets performed today, but certainly not with the frequency of Mozart's. He was the top dog in Vienna at the time. It is very doubtful that he had any hand in Mozart's death. A lot of the conflict was simple royal court intrigue: Italian composers dominated the Vienna music scene at the time, and a kid coming from the boondocks (Salzburg) and making a big impact in the big city felt very threatening to them. However, Salieri had a long and fruitful career as a composer, conductor and teacher (pupils included Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt).
But the point that Peter Schaeffer makes with the play is envy that Salieri, the character, felt for this young genius, and how that envy not only had evil effects on those around him but drove Salieri into madness. In truth, Salieri suffered from dementia in the last year of his life (he lived to age 75), but he did not go insane. We call this a literary device. The play does not attempt to be historically accurate, only to provide psychological insight into what envy can do to a person - people that compare themselves to others become either vain or bitter.
Whether Salieri had an unhappy attraction to sweets is only a portion of the character that Schaeffer drew. As someone noted earlier, Vienna is hardly a bad place to satisfy a sweet tooth. I just restocked my supply of Manner Schnitten the other day (at a local deli, I need to get back over there). -
Edward_de_Vere — 9 years ago(July 30, 2016 11:28 AM)
I doubt it was anyone's intent to say that (the fictionalized) Salieri missed his true calling as a pastry chef.
Salieri is given a sweet tooth in the movie to show how a man who forfeits one type of pleasure or vice usually compensates for it in other ways. In this case, it's a celibate man who retains a child-like perpetual taste for pastries and other sweets.
I thought that it was a nice touch, because it was a rather endearing quality that humanized Salieri to a point, so that we'd have some sympathy for him as well as despising him later in the film. -