The Film Amadeus

The Film Amadeus

This paper will take a look into the movie Amadeus, to see if the film accurately

depicts the history of Amadeus and the enlightenment of the characters. The time period

that the film takes place in is the 18th century. There is a mixture of social class in this

film. There are rulers and commoners shown in this film. The main characters in the film

which are Mozart, Salieri, and Emperor Joseph represent actual historical figures. The

film was made in 1984.

The film was somewhat accurate with the characters and the time, but for the

most part the film never stated what year everything was happening in. Someone could

tell that the time frame of the film was the 18th century, but you really couldn’t tell the

exact year it was happening. For example in one scene where Mozart’s father comes to

see him and his wife, we find out that she is pregnant. Later on in the movie she has a

child. There was no reference of time in the film. You can tell that months passed through

simple action like that one in the film. Another example would be in the time Amadeus

took to make his works. It’s hard to tell how long he took to make his operas, the way the

filmed showed. As for the characters the film depicted them well. There were some

things that did seem right. For the way they showed Salieri to kill Mozart. Looking at

information on this, I couldn’t find a fact to state that Salieri killed Mozart. As stated in

Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia “he died of typhoid fever in Venna on Dec. 5

1791; his burial was attended by few friends and the place of his grave is unmarked.”

This states nothing that Salieri was the reason for Amadeus’ death. The film is trying to

market the film as a tale of murder. But there really wasn’t any murder in this film. More

like a man willing to die to finish something he believed as a work of art. The film depicts Mozart more to killing him self then Salieri murdering him. Someone could argue

that Salieri did kill Mozart by dressing like his father to make the final opera. But this

was Mozart own doing, as his obsession with having perfect music took him over. Not to

get me wrong the film did a good job in showing Mozart. It had historical value and

entertainment. This film can be viewed as a quick historical vie...

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God differs from Mozart because Salieri didn’t envy God he hated God for giving Mozart

this gift. He did envy Mozart because he was everything he wanted to be.

In conclusion this film gave a good depiction of Mozart. Some of the points in the

film weren’t that accurate. Many little feature could of helped the film in be more of a

accurate historical film. This wasn’t a historical film, it was more for entertainment value.

If this film was not an entertaining film like it was then it would have never have been

should an award winning movie. This was a great film. I enjoyed it, found it funny, and

moving at times. I know little about Mozart before. After seeing the film I did learn more

about Mozart. This was not a boring film as I wanted to see what is going to happen. I

would recommend this film to be seen. If someone wants to be entertained they should

see it. If someone wants to learn a little about Mozart they should see the film, but if you

want to learn Amadeus’s whole life this film will not do this. So basically watch this film

for enjoyment and to learn the general information about Mozart.