Court composer Salieri is both tortured and awed by Mozart’s transcendent musical genius in Peter Shaffer and Miloš Forman’s exuberant and gloriously original film. Shaffer’s hit 1979 play had been considered unfilmable by some, but with Shaffer himself adapting it alongside Forman, the result was an Oscar-winning triumph. Dramatising the major events of the last decade of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 35 years, the film recounts the poisonous resentment felt by self-proclaimed ‘patron saint of mediocrity’ Antonio Salieri (a powerhouse Oscar-winning performance by Abraham) towards Hulce’s young genius, with Salieri increasingly tormented as his work becomes overshadowed by Mozart’s undeniable brilliance.
