Amadeus Revisited: A Brief Note

I’ve just finished viewing a tape of Milos Forman’s film, Amadeus, for the I’ve-lost-count number of times, and, as always, it was as engaging and moving an experience as it was on first viewing; a work of genuine cinematic art. And also as always, each time I view the film, I marvel at those who criticize it on the grounds that its portrayal of Mozart is as “a foul-mouthed idiot savant”; a portrayal that’s “a caricature” of the historical Mozart, as one prominent cultural critic put the matter.

I’m no Mozart expert, but I’ve studied enough of the literature to know that both those charges are ill-considered, not to say purblind. These critics seem to forget that this film is a work of fiction, not biography. And they seem to forget as well who it is that’s telling the story in Amadeus: crazy old Salieri, of course, not some historian or objective outside observer. But even though Amadeus is Salieri’s story about Mozart and a work of fiction, the film’s portrayal of Mozart captures and embraces in a brilliantly dramatic, theatrical, and, as is befitting of Mozart, comic way the awesome contradiction between the to all appearances ordinary man — a man, pace Maynard Solomon, as much child as man — and an astonishing body of work that in number, multifariousness, and profundity beggars the imagination as I’ve elsewhere put it on this blog. As I've also written,

Had Amadeus's Mozart come across as a "foul-mouthed idiot savant," and a mere "caricature," he would not have — could not have — captured as he did the hearts and minds of millions world-wide, most of whom knew Mozart previously only as a synonym for the precocious much in the same way Einstein has for almost a century been a synonym for genius. The Mozart of Amadeus is as warm-blooded, fully fleshed-out, and as true to the essential spirit of the historical Mozart ... as are the principal characters of Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro as warm-blooded, fully fleshed-out, and true to the essential spirit of the archetypes they represent. That's the genius of Amadeus as it is of the stageworks of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, God's amanuensis.

I wrote that more than two years ago, and nothing in the intervening time, and after numerous viewings, has given me cause to alter my judgment about the film or its portrayal of the man Mozart and his astonishing gift.