Amadeus, Milos Forman’s masterpiece with Tom Hulce as Mozart and F. Murray Abraham in those of Salieri, performs 40 and, for three days starting from March 24, will return to Italian cinemas restored in 4K. The minutage is the original one of the time, from 160 minutes: since 2002, the film has been available only and exclusively in Director’s Cut version, with about twenty minutes of additional scenes. An assembly appreciated and detested in a bipartisan way.

Then, to be fussy, the work in years has 41 years old: in the United States it was in fact released in theaters on September 19, 1984. However, and we say it mainly for any person born from 2000 onwards who found himself reading these lines for one reason or another, in “remote times” like the eighties, a crazy period in which the phones were still only the phones and the streaming did not even happen as a concept, that of the American films (and not only) of great appeal arrived in the cinemas of the boot months and months after the release in the country of origin.

This explains the reason for this discrepancy in the celebrations from one side of the Atlantic to the other.

Having made this necessary premise, the only thing you should do now is to stop reading and fond of you in a room that projects Amadeus to see it. It doesn’t matter if for the first time or twentieth. Because it is still the most rock musical film there is.

The Amadeus’ plot

Apparently, Amadeus might seem like a biopic, but the reality of the facts is far away.

Yes, it is true: the Kolossal tells the life, indeed, the lives of the two famous composers active in the Vienna of the second half of the 1700s at the court of Emperor Joseph II. The emperor in the film is played by Jeffrey Jones, a very good and very recognizable character often appeared several times also in Tim Burton’s films: for over twenty years he has been absent from the scenes because of some not indifferent legal problems that began in 2002 for possession of child pornography and for asking a 14 -year -old boy to lay photos. Naked.

But let’s go back to Amadeus, who is better, as that famous smurf with glasses would say.

We said: it looks like a biopic, but it is not. It is based on the theatrical piece of the same name by Peter Shaffer who is freely inspired by the life of the Salzburg composer. A stylization masterpiece in which Shaffer invented everything (or almost) of healthy plan. At least he did it on the idea at the base of the story which is also the winning one: the existence of a heated rivalry between Salieri and Mozart so as to bring the first to try to demolish his career and reputation of the second. The absolute first first of the show took place in London, in 1979, then he also moved to New York where the role of Salieri was actors like Ian McKellen, Frank Langella and Daniel Davis with Tim Curry, Peter Firth, John Pankow and Mark Hamill in those of Mozart.

Historical reliability or not, the skeleton is this. And it is there to support a “celluloid body” as they no longer see them now.

Between quarrels and communist spies

Then Milos Forman Amadeus didn’t even want to do it. Or rather, when he was brought to London to see the Shaffer show, he did it with the proverbial “Death in the heart”. The director twice Oscar winner, best direction in 1976 for someone flew on the cuckoo’s nest and in 1985 for Amadeus (who won 8 in total), was a czechoslovak emigrated to the United States who, at home, had been officially declared “non -grateful person” to the socialist republic. He had a form of natural rejection towards the stories of the composers who, in the then Soviet block, were highly appreciated because the musicians … made music, they did not say or did anything subversive.

But then he was struck by the show. He immediately called the producer Saul Zaentz, with whom he had already collaborated for someone flew on the cuckoo’s nest, to speak. That, casually, Zaentz had already opted the right of the piece.

It was the beginning of a journey that would be nice to see, one day, by a film on the back of the scenes of Amadeus.

To begin with, Forman and Shaffer turned into a strange couple who found themselves living imprisoned for four, five months in a farm in Connecticut in what they themselves defined their personal “torture room”. They found themselves isolated from everything and everyone to fight both with the blocking of the writer, to listen to Mozart continuously and improvise scenes from the theatrical show together. But above all to argue on every creative aspect of the film: the scenes, the dialogues and who had to say what. In the end, in the feature film, only moments and jokes were put on which both were in agreement.

To be daring was not only this background with the two main creative minds behind the film. There was also the rest of his processing, starting with a casting where the names of the semi-unknown Hulce and Murray Abraham for the main roles were chosen after examining the actors from all over the world. Forman did not want actors who were already there also because the two, in addition to showing that they have the qualities to impersonate Mozart and Salieri, also had to be able to divide the scene with the third protagonist of Amadeus: music.

The filming was not less adventurous than the casting, on the contrary. To begin with, they held themselves in Prague, in the Czechoslovakia one that was still part of the communist block and who was certainly not willing to welcome a “traitor son” like Forman with open arms. To obtain the placet of the authorities, the director had to accept not to meet any political dissident while he was at home. However, precisely the well -known laziness of the communist authorities was logistically of great help: in 1983, the year in which Amadeus was shot within six months, Prague still seemed to be a city stopped at the beginning of the 1800s, therefore perfect for stunting at the Vienna of the time. Obviously, most of the extras and workers who worked on the film were either spies or agents of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In the various movements, Forman was always followed by a couple of cars without a plaque, a move, this, that the director has always found “tautology” since his driver was also … a spy.

In short: Amadeus is a rock movie and it is all round. As it reinvents the figures of Mozart and Salieri thanks to the performances of two actors who, in some ways, have lived a little isolated from each other on the set of the film by triggering almost a real form of rivalry that reverberates throughout the film, until it exploded in the masterful duets in which Mozart is sick in bed and dictates its requiem in Salieri. And for how it was forged in a sui generis production context.

Amadeus is the son of an era of cinema that no longer exists, in which, on the one hand, the public recognized the value of certain films by decreeing its commercial success and, on the other, the Academy covered them with Oscar.

Today, negligible films such as Anora or Nomadland touch us.

Reviewing Amadeus on the big screen is like a tonic for the spirit.