Amadeus was a great film cinematically. And very entertaining. Hitcock quote - the audience will believe what I tell them. The music was great and very well performed - the opera scenes very well done, especially The Magic Flute - Queen of the Night part.

Shakespeare in Love was a fucking awful film. It was basically a Hollywood costume romcom for people who think they know something about English literature. I mean how the fuck can you hand out Oscars for that.

William, Paul.

Strange enough, "Amadeus" and "Shakespeare in love" are amongst the films I liked most in my whole life.

It can be personal, but I found those are great films (good story, good actors, good screenplay, good everything in fact).

When it comes to historical faith, it is my belief that historical books written by historians are just that : books written by people (like the bible, you know).  In the few cases we have documents first hand written by the protagonists themselves, well, those documents are just that : documents written by protagonists.  In no case those documents seem to me more valuable in term or "truth" than what an artist can "feel" about what the truth has really been.  If you were to write a book about your life, what would you do ?  If you wrote a book about a friend of yours that you like, what ? one you don't like, what ?  If you were asked to write the comments on the back of a record of a composer you like, what ?  No hard truth, anyway.  Is the truth about Mozart in his letters to his father ? Then indeed, he would appear a miserable man.

If I said what I feel : while I adore some of Mozart music (I like his mass music more than his keyboard music), I find that his writing is sometimes, well, a bit easy, largely copied upon the italians of his time and not elaborated like say that of Beethoven (which by the way I like less).  Think of how conservative his writing tricks are, think of how short his developments are, think of how poor his orchestration skills are, all this not whistandig his evident genie, of course.  I can hear you say "bullshit, man" while it could really be like I said, it is just that this is not what the critical mass of amateurs think about Mozart.  Because Mozart is not a human being anymore : he is a legend.  No truth applies to a legend.

Mozart's orchestration was not poor. It was exactly what his music needed. You really need to give an example of what you conisder to be poor if you want to make such sweeping statements, IMO.

DG

 Stephane, I appreciate how you like those films so maybe you're right and they're better than I think.  Actually I usually don't like to criticize since it is usually more productive to find something good than expose something bad. 

On the other hand the conservative aspect of Mozart's writing is because he was a pure Classical composer, not a Romantic, not a Modern.  His music was not copied from Italians, but arose out of the Classical symphonic style begun by Stamitz and represented most famously by Haydn and early Beethoven.  The short development is also due to the Classical tradition - it was only in the Romantic era of later Beethoven, Brahms, and especially Post Romanticism of Bruckner and Mahler that development became much longer and more complex.  An interesting little example of this is how Prokofieff wrote a characteristically "Classical" style symphony, in the 20th century, that featured a short, very tight little development section in the first and last movements that perfectly represented Classical symphonic practice in form though in a modern harmonic idiom.    

Also Mozart was not a bad orchestrator. One has to project back into the past - he lived not today  when everyone can listen to all eras of music instantly and hear everything that has ever been done in orchestration -  but in the Classical era BEFORE Beethoven revolutionized orchestration.  Besides, Mozart in his incredibly short life had already begun the revolution that Beethoven took over - if you listen to the later symphonies of Mozart or the Requiem you will hear some powerful, highly perfected and subtle orchestrations. 

DG, William,

You judge Mozart's orchestrational ability from a composition he wrote at 14 years of age? For "how" conservative Mozart was, and for what his innovations are in terms of any and all aspects of music composition, I would suggest you enrol at a university or music academy for a few years for a 'spoon-fed' approach, or do your own research on the subject, that will involve the origins of German classical music, Mannheim, and the strong Italian influence during Mozart's own time. A straightforward comparison between him and Haydns/Gluck/Paisiello/Clementi will do for a start...

As for me, knowing the first thing about Mozart (and most of the second), and knowing how easy it is, and how many composers in the history of music were at the top of their game, able to write masterpieces in EVERY genre - opera, concerto, symphony, quartet, sonata, divertimento, etc. - (none), my worship is unconditional.

Actually, I think Stephane brings up a good point here.  Adulation and worship can create a false sense of brilliance giving the subject of such adulation more credentials than they have earned otherwise.  Case in point, there is a certain composer whose name shall not be mentioned but his initials are H.Z., who is adored and worshiped by many of his imitators all over the world.  In some circles, like this forum for example, he is treated like a fire hydrant at a dog show.  Is the admiration deserved?  Is the ridicule deserved?

I mean I could pour my heart and soul into my next Magnum opus and I'm quite sure that me and my Magnum opus will probably be ignored.  But HZ could sit at his workstation and record his interpretation of a C major scale while sucking on a lollipop and I'm quite sure that he'll get a standing ovation Bravo! [Y][Y][Y]  Encore!!!  

Now I'm not going to compare Mozart to the fire hydrant but as Stephen points out we do tend to put a lot of professional trust in artists who are personal favorites and dehumanize them beyond the point of "legendary" status to immortality.  

Does anybody remember an academy award winning film called the Deer Hunter?  It was co-written and directed by a guy most have never heard of named Michael Cimino.  The Deer Hunter went on to win like five or six academy awards with Cimino taking Best Director and Best Picture.  After that, this guy was hot.  One movie and he was at the legendary status (actually two, the film he did before ...Hunter was a minor hit).  Everybody wanted him to direct there next big film.  He decided to write and direct his own project and he released a film called Heaven's Gate.  Uh oh... Not so good there Michael.  Then he followed that bomb with another bomb and that bomb with another.  The legend fell flat on his face.  The Deer Hunter was apparently an accident for him because nowadays nobody would let that guy direct a fruit loops commercial.

Amadeus is a good film and deserved the academy awards it won.  Unfortunately for Mozart, it's a good film because when people see it they think that the man behind the genius is actually the flatulating boob that the filmmakers portrayed him as.  However, there really is master direction by Forman.  One scene I remember is when Constanze and Leopold are arguing with each other and Mozart slowly escapes by becoming engrossed with the music he is composing on the billiard table.  The arguing fades while the music crescendos.  Notice the billiard ball that Mozart is playing with.  It is keeping the time of the music he is composing.  Also, the pretty girls who keep helping themselves to Salieri's sweets which ironically are his replacement of 'sex with pretty girls' since he shows his devotion to God through celibacy.  

I just cringe when I watch how Constanze is portrayed.  She needed to be the character she was to support a narrative in the film and I understand that but it really is a slap in the face of her memory.  After Mozart died penniless, she sacrificed to preserve his music so the world could enjoy it.     

@Stephane Collin said:

The tricks are simple and come from other composers : brass with timpani at the majestic expositions and at the cadences, and.. that's it.  But it is Mozart, so it is (must be) genius work.

Well that is what I was talking about as Classical practice, not Mozart.  In other words he did not begin writing for brass like Wagner or Mahler (partly because without valves it was impossible).  I just recently noticed how Beethoven's orchestration of the Fifth symphony is brilliantly characteristic for all the instruments EXCEPT one - the trumpet.  Nothing but simplistic little accentuating fanfares with timpani - in fact, the trumpet part could have been a re-write of the timpani part.  Every other instrument is used with wonderful effect and attention to its timbral possibilities.   So this is an example of the greatest revolutionary inventor of modern orchestration - Beethoven - not completely freeing himself from his time.  Though he came closer than maybe any other human being who ever lived.  So for Mozart even earlier not to realize he could do more with trumpets is simply a fact of not fully transcending the era he was born, raised and educated in.  Also I like Mozart not because of a knee jerk reaction.  It is because of an incredible range of high quality music that FORCES a person to acknowledge how great he was.   

You are very correct about the Albinoni - I love the re-write/orchestration of that piece by Giazotto (and did a demo of it you can find here!)

Jasensmith/Paul R ---   I know that Milos Forman is a good director and did a clever job of staging scenes of Amadeus, dealing with actors, using the good cinematography of the Prague stand-in for Salzburg and Vienna etc.    Unfortunately,  the content of the scenes he directed is TOTAL BULLSHIT.   And it is about a historically REAL person.  That  to me  causes just a wee bit of a problem in accepting it as a great film.   It also is irritating because the screenwriter used a TRICK to dramatize it instead of reality:  the trick was "Mozart is an idiot savant, Salieri is a hard-working mediocrity, I will show that contrast as the center of my drama."  But that is FALSE.  The reality is Mozart worked hard on his compositions and strove to create something great evolving throughout his miserably short life more than other composers evolve over 70 years.   He didn't just excrete great music.    And that simplistic, lazy lie by the screenwriter is the center of this film.   

@William said:

Jasensmith/Paul R ---   I know that Milos Forman is a good director and did a clever job of staging scenes of Amadeus, dealing with actors, using the good cinematography of the Prague stand-in for Salzburg and Vienna etc.    Unfortunately,  the content of the scenes he directed is TOTAL BULLSHIT.   And it is about a historically REAL person.  That  to me  causes just a wee bit of a problem in accepting it as a great film.   It also is irritating because the screenwriter used a TRICK to dramatize it instead of reality:  the trick was "Mozart is an idiot savant, Salieri is a hard-working mediocrity, I will show that contrast as the center of my drama."  But that is FALSE.  The reality is Mozart worked hard on his compositions and strove to create something great evolving throughout his miserably short life more than other composers evolve over 70 years.   He didn't just excrete great music.    And that simplistic, lazy lie by the screenwriter is the center of this film.   

I'm not sure where we disagree on this.  It could be that I come from a film background and I can appreciate Amadeus as an artistic effort in the film realm as opposed to the music realm even though it is a complete lie.  And unfortunately people seem to think that the film is fact and not the fantasy that it is.   

Oliver Stone's JFK is a complete lie, conspiracy theories aside, but I still appreciate the film on an artistic level because it was a bueatifully told lie with a brilliant score by John Williams.  Now if I were to say that to the family of Jackie O, or Kennedy and LBJ supporters they would say that I was "STONED" pun intended.  They think the movie is, like Amadeus, "Total Bullshit."  What did you think of JFK. 

Hijacking this thread further - taking my cue from Jasen's penultimate post here, where he found the temerity to mention HZ in the same thread as WAM - I found this lovely, superb, ingenuous query in the VI control forum:

In vain have I been trying to establish how vile, putrescent, and CLONED, modern film-scoring has decayed into being, only to be called reactionary, trolling, etc., and having that awful music called 'inspired', 'melodic'(!!!), and 'dramatic' at the same time. Here we have a young hopeful, asking the freaking obvious, and inadvertently arriving at, and confirming my point, from the opposite direction. Enjoy:

http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34375&highlight=

 Somehow I am glad I never went on that Forum. 

I am not a member, I just happened upon it again after many a year.

 Well I'm certainly glad to hear that.  We don't want any VSL Forum members slumming over there.  Here, we have standards.  Also, the eye of DIETZ9000 who monitors all onboard functions and can terminate life support at any time.

Of course if Zimmer is brought up all standards are dropped immediately, but never mind that.