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Experienced at the Viennale 2023 on the big screen of the Gartenbaukino - as it shall be for such a picture! To see Mozart in Vienna is an additional emotional plus, I guess. In the city that could not give the fitting praise to the genius of Mozart in his time.

As one of the foremost lovers of his music, I know his biography well. And that Salieri was not to blame for the early death of Mozart. We musiclovers will forever struggle with the big question: what masterworks could never be written, how many grandios operas can never be performed, because the only one, who was able to write them died too early.

But fate did not allow it! And that is the phenomenal trick of Amadeus that this fate is given a single face - that of Salieri. And so the viewer is able to experience the fate of Mozart in a translation that travels through similar emotions, like those we feel globally about the early loss of Mozart. And this is - pure art!

We see a fake story, but this fake story is closer to our common felt historical pain than any true documentary could tell us.

It was a terrible failure of the Academy not to give the Oscar for best actor to both, Abraham and Hulce.

The final scene, Mozart in his deathbed teaches Salieri, how to go on with the music score of his Requiem, is acting at the very highest level. No doubt, Hulce and Abraham are - in this moment - fully, totally, Mozart and Salieri.

It is always difficult to find a right rating 7, 8 or 9 for a very good movie. But if you see a rating-10-movie (for my taste there might be appr. 30 movies around, I would rate 10), there is no doubt that it deserves a 10. And, absolutely no doubt, Milos Foreman's Amadeus is one of these movies!

Before the projection of the movie the daughter of Eric Pleskow (president of the Viennale for 20 years and producer of Amadeus in 1984) gave the Oscar statue for Amadeus as best picture to Eva Sangiori, the present director of the Viennale, as a gift to the Viennale - a very nice gesture!

Seen at Viennale 2023: the problem with the digital medium is that it became too cheap to produce long movies in our days. On expensive celluloid, I guess, movies like this would be shorter. To fill the length one discovery is made ALWAYS after another and so is discussed at court in the same time line. This is extremely constructed. In a case of crime at least some happenings of the past should be in front of the judge at once and not like pearls on a string discussed one after the other. The movie content is highly intellectual sorted in the time arrow. So there is no room for actors and actress to give much of a performance.

The Palme d'Or of Cannes should be given to movies that might be good enough to be remembered in several years, too. This boring piece of couple relation themes will be forgotten im a few years for good.