Word: mozarts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most part, the evening belonged to Amadeus, the fictionalized account of the last years of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It won eight awards in all, including those for Best Picture, Best Director (Milos Forman), Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham for his role as Salieri, Mozart's nemesis) and Best Screenplay Adaptation (to Peter Shaffer, who rewrote his hit play). Tom Hulce, 31, also received a Best Actor nomination for his all-American, Huckleberry Finn interpretation of Mozart. Though he was not honored, Jeffrey Jones, 38, deserves a crown of his own for his portrayal of the blandly arrogant Emperor Joseph...
...lavish Amadeus is not exactly Cinderella, it is an odd choice for so much Hollywood glory. It is long (2 hr. 38 min.), without the epic quality that often marks lengthy pictures. Its theme, moreover, is rarefied: God's inexplicable gift of genius to a lout (Mozart, as Shaffer conceives his character), and his assignment of mediocrity to someone who is eminently deserving (the devout Salieri). But the biggest obstacle is Mozart, whose very name intimidates many moviegoers. The picture has prospered anyway, grossing $34 million in the U.S. and Canada even before the awards...
...people like it, they like it for the same reason the play excited me. It was a very entertaining evening in the theater, and yet I learned a lot I had never known before. I believe that people also identify with the characters. There is a little of Mozart in each of us, and perhaps a great deal of Salieri." For Forman and Shaffer the challenge was to transform Shaffer's stage play, where much is left to the imagination, into a sumptuous movie that includes fully staged operas, grand palaces and hundreds of beautifully costumed extras. For five months...
...will probably transform Amadeus from a moderately successful film into a big hit. "We now have a chance to make $60 million or better in domestic box office," says Producer Saul Zaentz. "And we have a chance to reach an audience that is afraid of classical music, afraid of Mozart." Orion Pictures has deliberately distributed the film to only a limited number of theaters, hoping to create the feeling that it was special, an "event," in the word of Orion's president of distribution, Robert Cheren...
...fall it offered the U.S. premiere of John Schlesinger's An Englishman Abroad, an affectionately wrought drama based on Actress Coral Browne's chance encounter with Soviet Spy Guy Burgess (played with world-weary charm by Alan Bates). In January A&E telecast the first modern public performance of Mozart's "lost" Symphony in A Minor, with Tom Hulce (an Oscar nominee for Amadeus) serving as an agreeable host...