Amadeus - The Transfer from Stage to Screen

As we have learned from the past, the transfer of a drama from stage to screen has always been a difficult enterprise. Before Amadeus, five of Peter Shaffer's plays had already been turned into films, but they were neither successful nor was Shaffer himself satisfied with the results. For that reason Shaffer was very sceptical when Milos Forman first approached him in November 1979 and proposed to make a film of Amadeus. It took Forman more than two years of persuasion until Shaffer finally agreed to work on the project. The two men chose Forman's Connecticut farmhouse as their working place, and after four months of isolation, the new script was ready. As Amadeus on stage was just as imaginative, impressive and 'uncinematic' as Shaffer's other plays, Forman struggled to convince the playwright of the need for "tearing the play apart and putting it together in a new form". As we can imagine, the method proposed by Forman was at times very painful for the author and Shaffer really doubted "if there would be a film of Amadeus at all". However the 'demolition-strategy' seemed to work, and the result was one of the most successful film-productions, receiving eight Academy Awards.

As a consequence of the rewrite, the film version of Amadeus, released in September 1984,. deleted some elements of the play and added new scenes and characters to fill the gaps from the cuts.

Among the characters which had to be removed were also the two Venticelli. Their importance within the play cannot be denied, as they function as an informing chorus of what cannot be shown on the stage directly. In the film there is no need for such devices as the camera can simply show the scenes described. This is most clear when looking at the different presentations of Mozart's marriage. In the play we have the two Venticelli informing Salieri that Mozart has married and that his father will be furious. In the film this important information is presented by showing the marriage of Mozart and Constanze directly, then in the following shot, we see Leopold Mozart reading his son's letter with the news of the marriage and crushing it violently.

Such a scene also raises the issue of one of the most important 'gap-filling' characters - Leopold Mozart. In the play, Mozart's father never appears physically. Though we get some hints on Mozart's strong emotional dependency on Leopold in the play, the film allows a much clearer picture of that relationship (which was surely more than ambivalent). By showing Leopold's visits to Salzburg and Vienna, his quarrel with Constanze and the final break between him and his son, Mozart's family relationships become much more transparent.

Other characters introduced in the screen version are, for example, Madame Weber (Mozart's shrill mother-in-law) and Emmanuel Schikaneder who serve to make the film more realistic and entertaining.

Another important aspect in creating the atmosphere of the film is the use of music. The extensive and effective use of fragments of Mozart's operas contribute to the ambience, the music dominating the film in a way that is not possible on stage. This makes a uniquely cinematic experience of the film.

Though it was definitely not easy to translate Shaffer's 'uncinematic' play for the screen, the two authors did a good job, with Shaffer and Forman really succeeding in "giving birth to the same child twice" or, as Deemer put it:

"What we are left with are two Amadeuses, each powerful in its own way; the play more confrontational to the audience, the film more powerful in its over-all storytelling, each a solid accomplishment."