I hadn't watched this movie in way too many years/decades, and was afraid that, like so many other pictures I loved in the 80s, it would still be good but full of things that spoke too much of the period.
I was wrong. This is still a spectacular film. In fact, I think I appreciate it more now than I did then.
A ★★★★★ review of Amadeus (1984)
There aren’t a lot of films from 1984 that have aged as gracefully as this, which still has stunning music, tremendous performances all around, and manages to celebrate both the power of brilliance and the power of bitter mediocrity all in one giggling breath. Filmed in Czechoslovakia (and, as the later documentary tells us, well before the fall of the Iron Curtain), the period recreation is splendid as a backdrop for the proud Salieri and the wa…
Love Jeffrey Jones' very brief, befuddled spin.
+The Bruce, Mile High Jones' Emperor is a delight — both his indecisiveness and desire not to seem out of his depth.
I dearly love the scene where he insists on playing the Welcome March that Salieri has composed for Mozart's arrival. Nobody can tell him no, and he's truly sincere in his desire to pound it out, but Salieri, looking on … well, it just reminds me of every time I've let someone else I'm trying to instruct take the (computer) keyboard, and try and do something …