STARS: F MURRAY ABRAHAM, TOM HULCE, ELIZABETH BERRIDGE, SIMON CALLOW, ROY DOTRICE, CHRISTINE EBERSOLE, JEFFREY JONES, CHARLES KAY & KENNETH McMILLAN.

DIRECTED: MILOS FORMAN

Story

This epic tale follows the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from his childhood to his death at the age of 35 and centres on the period he spent around the Court of the Austrian Emperor Joseph. The story is narrated by Salieri, the Court Composer, by way of a dialogue with his confessor. Salieri is a deservedly Award winning performance by F Murray Abraham who ages credibly over the 30 odd year span of the story. Salieri is both intensely jealous and in awe of Mozart’s boundless talents and sees Mozart as HAVING the creative gifts which he so yearns for. He sets out to undermine Mozart’s position in the Court. Tom Hulce’s Mozart is a thoroughly objectionable character and his own worst enemy; he is arrogant, precocious and bawdy, squanders his opportunities and descends into alcoholism and poverty. Along the way he composes some of the worlds most beautiful and enduring music. In this characterization we see Mozart as an atypical version of the “flawed genius”. Whilst this film has its tragic undertones there are moments of fun, happiness and humour and the performances of all involved are memorable. It is also a sumptuous and lavish period (late 1700s) and costume drama with much of it shot on location in Europe. Mozart’s music is woven in as an integral part of the fabric of the film and makes for wonderful viewing and listening.

Extras

Wow! This is some package and offers hours of enjoyment and interest. On Disc One Forman and Shaffer provide a fascinating feature length commentary. “The Making” on Disc Two is an hour long, in depth, documentary dealing with various aspects of the origins of the film, the writing of the screenplay, and its production, involving the Director (Milos Forman), the Writer (Peter Shaffer), members of the cast and other key members of the production team. It is absorbing viewing. Also provided are interactive menus, Cast/Director highlights, Theatrical Trailer, scene access, English in 5.1 & 2.0 and Italian 5.1, feature subtitles in English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Romanian, Bulgarian and Italian for the hearing impaired.

Summary

An enormously successful film picking up 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, Director and Adapted Screenplay. (Interestingly from the same Producer and Director who gave us that earlier Academy Award winning blockbuster “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” As the Director’s Cut there are twenty additional minutes of footage spread across a number of scenes taking it to 173 minutes. This is a new digital transfer with the soundtrack re-mastered and presented in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Surround 2.0. The video and sound quality as played on my JVC TH-A9 system were brilliant. To top it all off the set is beautifully packaged and will make a quality gift for the coming festive season.