Amadeus

In 1984, Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus was released theatrically. Taking place in Vienna during the second half of the 18th century, it documents a mostly dramatic depiction of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s arrival to Vienna. The film’s main character is it’s title character. Aside from Mozart, the film is centred around fellow composer Antonio Salieri, depicted as his rival.

The film takes place primarily in Vienna, Austria. It starts in 1823 with the elderly Salieri’s attempted suicide. It then goes back to around 1781 with Mozart’s arrival in Vienna. There’s no explicit indication in the film of how much time passes, but the titles of the pieces Mozart creates gives the idea of when things occurred. For example, when Mozart was pleading for The Marriage of Figaro to be shown, this meant it would have been about 1786 in the film. The death of Mozart’s father, Leopold, was to have happened the year after. Later on, when The Magic Flute was shown, that also was clear to have been in 1791, the same year of the death of Mozart. The rest of the events in between were all to have happened in that 10 year period.

The film is based on true events, but also is a dramatic, fabricated one as well. Antonio Salieri and Mozart were never really rivals; it has been documented that they were in fact decent colleagues. While there was a rumour that Salieri poisoned Mozart, it was proven to be false. The other events that followed with Salieri’s malicious persona never happened, such as luring Constanze for sex in return for a favour or showing up to Mozart’s door in the death mask his father wore. This portrayal shaped itself to be the Hollywood archetype of “hero vs. villain” with the underdog Salieri turning evil to take down the ambitious and talented hero, Mozart. Another fictitious portrayal is that of Mozart being an alcoholic. He favoured punch in real life, but was never documented to be the alcoholic that’s seen in the film. Other tidbits included Mozart actually having...