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slipjig3The 100 Scenes Project begins with Amadeus because Adam the Movie Buff started with Amadeus.
My memories of that evening are clearer than those of most trips to the theatre: my red-upholstered seat to the left of the screen about halfway back, my dad at my side and my mom and sister further down. I was thirteen, and already a veteran filmgoer since young childhood, everything from kid-vid twaddle to action and space opera to more sober adult affairs like Reds and Terms of Endearment. All of which—well, okay, most of which—I enjoyed to varying degrees, and going to the movies was certainly a treat, but I still hadn't had the Big Connection yet, the movie experience that would truly crack open my head and show me what cinema is capable of, teach me that the story is only part of the story.
And then came Amadeus, and everything changed. I was awed by the spectacle, yes, but I had seen spectacle before (I was a child of Star Wars, after all). What made it remarkable, though, was that it was the first movie I could truly see, in all its complex splendor: the writing, the cinematography, the art direction, the music, dear holy gods the acting.... It was all there, and it was drawing me in below the surface of plot and humor and intrigue and showing me something so much more.
How completely did it captivate me? It was a nearly three-hour adult drama, and I didn't need a bathroom break. You couldn't pry me from that chair with a winch.
Even better, it was nearing the end of that evening when I first encountered what remains to this day my favorite scene from any movie ever in the history of ever: Mozart on his deathbed, dictating his Requiem Mass in D Minor:
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Antonio Salieri (played by an Oscar-winning F. Murray Abraham) is a composer crippled by the curse of being just good enough to recognize his own mediocrity—bad enough on its own, but a hundred times worse when faced with an aloof, childish genius such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce, also nominated), whose rough drafts are more flawlessly brilliant than anything Salieri could ever conjure. As his envy and bile toward Mozart grows, he foments a plan to exact revenge: anonymously convince him to compose a requiem mass that Salieri would steal and sign his own name to, to be played at Mozart's own funeral. This last bit would be the result of murder, of course, but murder becomes a moot point as Mozart's health slips into decline, thanks to Salieri's machinations wearing at his psyche and his tortured memories of his now-deceased father. In the end, Mozart, now too weak to write, asks Salieri to be his stenographer as he dictates the music in his head to him.
Thus begins some of the most stunning acting you'll ever see in a major motion picture. The two men have been cohort-enemies for most of the show's duration, but they have always held their all-abiding love of music in common; Salieri, even when his hatred for Mozart ran deep, never lost any of his admiration for the latter's music. And now, in this small bedroom in the dead of night, all of their enmity and gamesmanship falls away, leaving only the tension that comes on the verge of creation. The rhythm of their language falls into a natural cadence unlike anything heard in the film up until that point, clattering with an energy that manages to build a level of excitement usually reserved for action sequences, between Salieri's bewilderment and eventual understanding of what Mozart is asking for (Hulce would deliberately skip lines without warning to keep Abraham off-kilter) and Mozart's physical weakness that will be his undoing but still can't quash the energy that comes with the creative spark. They yell, they argue, but it's all toward a mutual goal, one that—for a moment, anyway—they succeed in reaching.
The brilliance of this scene, however, is that while we're dazzled by the actors' byplay, director Milos Forman and writer Peter Shaffer achieve a miracle: they're able to explain, even to those who know nothing of music, why Mozart was a genius. It's so subtle that you don't even notice it while it's happening. Mozart dictates a line, and the soundtrack plays it back to us in the audience, stripped of context—bass, tenor, violin, horn. The individual parts are simple, sparse, and few in number; they seem inconsequential, almost, as if they'll never add up to anything much. And then comes that moment when Mozart puts out his hand, saying, "Show me, the whole thing. From the beginning." He takes the score in hand, blinks, raises his conducting hand...and suddenly the full force of the "Confutatis" movement of the Requiem is blazing on the soundtrack, and we can hear it, hear all of it, and it is miles beyond what the individual parts would have us believe. Something we wouldn't have seen, but Mozart did, without even half-looking.
Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, voca me cum benedictus: "When the accused are confounded and doomed to flames of woe, call me among the blessed." Amadeus taught me that great film, like the Requiem Mass in D Minor, is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Blessed, indeed.
My memories of that evening are clearer than those of most trips to the theatre: my red-upholstered seat to the left of the screen about halfway back, my dad at my side and my mom and sister further down. I was thirteen, and already a veteran filmgoer since young childhood, everything from kid-vid twaddle to action and space opera to more sober adult affairs like Reds and Terms of Endearment. All of which—well, okay, most of which—I enjoyed to varying degrees, and going to the movies was certainly a treat, but I still hadn't had the Big Connection yet, the movie experience that would truly crack open my head and show me what cinema is capable of, teach me that the story is only part of the story.
And then came Amadeus, and everything changed. I was awed by the spectacle, yes, but I had seen spectacle before (I was a child of Star Wars, after all). What made it remarkable, though, was that it was the first movie I could truly see, in all its complex splendor: the writing, the cinematography, the art direction, the music, dear holy gods the acting.... It was all there, and it was drawing me in below the surface of plot and humor and intrigue and showing me something so much more.
How completely did it captivate me? It was a nearly three-hour adult drama, and I didn't need a bathroom break. You couldn't pry me from that chair with a winch.
Even better, it was nearing the end of that evening when I first encountered what remains to this day my favorite scene from any movie ever in the history of ever: Mozart on his deathbed, dictating his Requiem Mass in D Minor:
[Error: unknown template video]
Antonio Salieri (played by an Oscar-winning F. Murray Abraham) is a composer crippled by the curse of being just good enough to recognize his own mediocrity—bad enough on its own, but a hundred times worse when faced with an aloof, childish genius such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce, also nominated), whose rough drafts are more flawlessly brilliant than anything Salieri could ever conjure. As his envy and bile toward Mozart grows, he foments a plan to exact revenge: anonymously convince him to compose a requiem mass that Salieri would steal and sign his own name to, to be played at Mozart's own funeral. This last bit would be the result of murder, of course, but murder becomes a moot point as Mozart's health slips into decline, thanks to Salieri's machinations wearing at his psyche and his tortured memories of his now-deceased father. In the end, Mozart, now too weak to write, asks Salieri to be his stenographer as he dictates the music in his head to him.
Thus begins some of the most stunning acting you'll ever see in a major motion picture. The two men have been cohort-enemies for most of the show's duration, but they have always held their all-abiding love of music in common; Salieri, even when his hatred for Mozart ran deep, never lost any of his admiration for the latter's music. And now, in this small bedroom in the dead of night, all of their enmity and gamesmanship falls away, leaving only the tension that comes on the verge of creation. The rhythm of their language falls into a natural cadence unlike anything heard in the film up until that point, clattering with an energy that manages to build a level of excitement usually reserved for action sequences, between Salieri's bewilderment and eventual understanding of what Mozart is asking for (Hulce would deliberately skip lines without warning to keep Abraham off-kilter) and Mozart's physical weakness that will be his undoing but still can't quash the energy that comes with the creative spark. They yell, they argue, but it's all toward a mutual goal, one that—for a moment, anyway—they succeed in reaching.
The brilliance of this scene, however, is that while we're dazzled by the actors' byplay, director Milos Forman and writer Peter Shaffer achieve a miracle: they're able to explain, even to those who know nothing of music, why Mozart was a genius. It's so subtle that you don't even notice it while it's happening. Mozart dictates a line, and the soundtrack plays it back to us in the audience, stripped of context—bass, tenor, violin, horn. The individual parts are simple, sparse, and few in number; they seem inconsequential, almost, as if they'll never add up to anything much. And then comes that moment when Mozart puts out his hand, saying, "Show me, the whole thing. From the beginning." He takes the score in hand, blinks, raises his conducting hand...and suddenly the full force of the "Confutatis" movement of the Requiem is blazing on the soundtrack, and we can hear it, hear all of it, and it is miles beyond what the individual parts would have us believe. Something we wouldn't have seen, but Mozart did, without even half-looking.
Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, voca me cum benedictus: "When the accused are confounded and doomed to flames of woe, call me among the blessed." Amadeus taught me that great film, like the Requiem Mass in D Minor, is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Blessed, indeed.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 04:06 am (UTC)#2 - I think I'm going to love your 100 Things series.
#3 - F. Murray Abraham is my little sister's friend's dad. (I was friends with Howard Da Silva's kids - apparently we were each allowed one celeb-adjacent connection)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 02:29 pm (UTC)2) Thank you! *beams*
3) No kidding? That. Is. Awesome. He seems like a neat guy.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 04:20 am (UTC)I particularly love this scene too. I'm glad you included it, with extra yay for it being first. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 02:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 04:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 02:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 07:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 02:43 pm (UTC)And do see it again, especially if you're only familiar with the original release. The "director's cut" is currently available on DVD, with about 20 minutes of additional material; you learn a lot more about Mozart's financial woes, and discover that his wife Constanze had really good reasons to hate Salieri.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 11:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 02:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 11:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-27 05:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 12:43 pm (UTC)♥
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 02:50 pm (UTC)