Amadeus : Fact vs Fiction
Amadeus was first a very fictionalized play on the lives of Amadeus Wolfgang Mozart and Antonio Salieri. It was inspired by the short play Mozart and Salieri written by Aleksanr Pushkin. Amadeus was written by Peter Shaffer. The play was so popular that they decided to create a film adaption.Directed by Milos Forman who is well known for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Man on the Moon. On September 19th, 1984 the movie was released to very high reviews and won 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture. It also won 4 Golden Globes, 4 LAFCA Awards, 1 American Cinema Editors award, 1Casting Society of America award, 1 Director's Guild award and many more. Many critics and audiences alike see Amadeus as one of the best movies of 1984., but there are some things that well they helped make a good movie, but they really didn't happened. When Shaffer wrote his play there were many things that were fictionalized. Here are many of the things in the movie that were far from reality. The movie's main theme is that Salieri was jealous of Mozart. So what is real and fake in the movie about Salieri. Well to start off Salieri's jealousy over Mozart. While it makes a good movie it is believed to be untrue in real life. Many accounts say that Salieri had a deep respect for Mozart and the two had a great relationship. The film also has Salieri confessing he killed Mozart by poisoning him. This is also fiction. Mozart actually died from a fever, but how did this idea start ? well it was a rumor that circulated Vienna in the 1820's. In 1825 his caretakers said that Salieri was senile but never spoke about killing Mozart. The film shows Mozart's father Leopold coming to vist Mozart and Stanze in Vienna in 1785. The film makes it look like the first time that Stanze and Leopold met. In fact they met two years before in 1783. A meeting that is said to not go very well. The film also makes Stanze look cold and naive, however she wasn't. Mozart loved his wife. Stanze also is rumored to have slept with one of Mozart's students and that Mozart's son Franz was actually not his son. This can be easily disproven as Franz had a genetic deformity which Mozart also had; a malformed left ear. As you can see biography movies don't always get the facts right, but it can still achieve critical sucess.
