This paper analyzes the film "Amadeus" (Milos Forman, 1984), which received numerous awards and generally favorable reviews, though it has been criticized for being historically inaccurate in a number of areas.
Abstract This paper states that the overall effect of the film "Amadeus" is as a well-crafted and dramatic telling of an interesting story, which happens to be about historical figures. This paper explains that one of the reasons for much of the criticism of the historical accuracy in the film is because the idea that Salieri killed Mozart, while not a new one, has little basis in fact. The author points out that the way Forman directs the movie emphasizes the image of Mozart as a boorish young man with a terrible giggle who writes brilliant music effortlessly while chasing women and hanging out in bars.
From the Paper "The opening scene in the film sets the tone for much of what follows. The first image is of a cold street scene at night, the street filled with snow, and as a Mozartian overture is heard, the voice of Salieri cries out from inside his apartment, "Mozart!" The attempted suicide of Salieri is counterpointed by the Mozart opera overture heard over it, and as Salieri is carried through the streets and the snow, he seems to see a grand ball from the past. We, then, see Salieri in the hellish asylum, though his own room is something of an oasis of calm and music amidst the general torment of the main halls. In this way, Salieri is presented as both part of the asylum and somehow apart from it, living more in the past than in the present. Salieri's plight is made evident as he plays his own tune and finds that his audience does not remember it, which is precisely what he feared -- Mozart's pieces would be remembered, and his would not."
Abstract In this tale, we are met by Pip, first a young boy taken under the wing of a felon who places him with a delusional old maid, then a snobbish young man with expectations of being a member of the aristocracy and finally as a humbled man who has learned the lesson of humility. Childhood is a time in which what we are and do then determines in great part who we will become. Dickens, clearly, employs a significant amount of his own past and dreams for this novel. The themes of good and evil, of right and wrong, of sadness and happiness are all played right along side of each other in a demonstration that life rarely follows a straight and narrow path, that it is important to experience a fall from grace, or to lose one's great expectations, in order to fully own one's life. The hard-working humble man that Pip becomes by the end of the book would have been an insufferable immature boor had a change not taken place. For children, disappointment is indeed a bitter teacher. But, it is a necessary one as well. For it is in later childhood and adolescence that we can begin to fully understand that life will not always go our way. Unfortunately, there are many with lives that protect them from such knowledge. For them, perhaps, connecting with Pip is impossible. For the rest of us, however, we can truly understand what it is to have great expectations and to see them disappear, only to find that we are indeed the better for it. The exploration of childhood, and the symbolic nature of young development, is absolutely essential to this book. We are able to watch as Pip's infantile dreams of greatness, riches and power turn him into a monster, for no one actually gets what they want simply because they want it. Only the fact that he is a child redeems him.
