#FastAndLoose
Posted on 02/24/2015 2:31:28 PM PST by Borges
It is 30 years since Amadeus swept the board at the Academy Awards. Miloš Forman’s 1984 film of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, took home eight statuettes that night, including best film, best director, best actor and best adapted screenplay. Arguably the finest movie ever made about the process of artistic creation and the unbridgeable gap between human genius and mediocrity, it has taken its place in motion picture history and is invariably described as a masterpiece.
All this is despite the fact the film plays shamelessly fast and loose with historical fact, taking as its basis a supposedly bitter rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his counterpart Antonio Salieri, court composer for Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, that may have been nothing more than a vague rumour. Alex von Tunzelmann, writing in the Guardian, is one of the many historians frustrated by the glittering success of a film that is so inaccurate, historically speaking. She describes it as “laughably” wrong – “a deadly rivalry that never was, a dried-up bachelor who was actually a father of eight, and flops that were hits in reality” – and reckons nothing about the film can redeem “the fact that the entire premise – that Salieri loathed Mozart and plotted his demise – is probably not true”.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Classical Ping
thanks Borges.
to all, some background music for your surfing needs:
https://www.youtube.com/results?q=Antonio+Salieri&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=w1
Ditto. Knowing the true history of these two composers did not detract from my enjoyment of seeing Pinto as Wolfie.
People get upset about hearing space ships fly by in Sci Fi, too. Or when cowboys have 20 shot revolvers.
My favorite part in the movie...the one that speaks most to the difference between mediocrity and genius....and how mediocrity and authority mix together to stifle genius and excellence......is when he Mozart is told his composition has “Too many notes...take some of the notes out.”
#FastAndLoose
You mean he didn't look like Falco?
On the one hand, I agree with that ...
On the other ... IMHO, one sign of a mediocre novelist is the use of too many words. Sometimes, WAY too many.
I offer L. Ron Hubbard's epic tome Battlefield Earth as an example. It would have benefited greatly from having been exposed to an editor.
Glad they straightened it out for me. Any news on innaccuacies in the movie “Wings”?
Really, anyone who knew anything about Mozart’s life knew the thing was a delightful fabrication. Fun yes, a biography, no. Bach standing on one side of God’s throne and Beethoven on the other, goes the old joke. “And where is Mozart? Sitting in His lap.”
For me it was when Mozart began playing Salieri’s piece
after hearing it just once, then began playing it backwards...
“Old Mozart’s in the closet, let ‘im out! Let ‘im out, Let ‘im out!”
I suppose it’s good to be reminded of the problems with the film as history.
I suppose it’s also good to be reminded of the problems of filet mignon as ice cream.
I identified with the Salieri character. THere are things I just can’t do. I could have started trying when I was three and worked hard until I was 60, and I still could never ever write music like Bach, or fight like Jackie Chan, or .... any number of things.
And yet, can there be a serious question that excellence is self-justifying or that beauty confronts meaninglessness and wins?
So how shall we deal with our many incapacities? What do they mean, if anything?
In one taxonomic scheme of sins, envy is seen as a defect, a falling-short, of love. If I loved you as I ought, I would rejoice in your gifts.
In any case, it was a fine tale, and lushly told. It never occurred to me to wonder how true it was, in some photographical or statistical sense. It was true every way I needed it to be true.
And a bonfire.
That was an examples of a talented man seeing how much the difference was between his high talent level and pure genius.... Not quite the example I was thinking of another great time in the movie how Salieri was constantly being humbled. I was referring to how and authority figure or a government official with power can stifle genius
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No, really! There's actually a good story lurking in there. Too bad ElRon was the man trying to tell it ... He was a looney from way back, but a half decent SciFi writer before he invented his nutjob religion and became consumed with his megalomania.
Tom Hulce as Mozart in the film is good, but it’s F. Murray Abraham as Salieri who is magnificent.
After Battlefield Earth, our boy L.Ron turned his hand to the “Mission Earth” “decology” with each of the 10 volumes almost as long as Battlefield Earth. If these are an insight into L.Ron’s psyche, it was a weird, weird, bad place. An editor could only have been a positive influence.
“The finest movie ever made about artistic creation”
Oh yeah! What about Godzilla? How many movies have they made about Mozart? One. How many movies have they made about Godzilla? Dozens.
It’s like when Godzilla fights a giant Sea Cucumber. It always brings tears to my eyes.
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