Amadeus

When Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) set himself to adapt Peter Schaffer’s play, he found a perfect fit for a new chapter in his filmmaking into the bombastic and the intricate. A biography of Mozart (Tom Hulce), but shown through the cracked mirror of his contemporary and rival Salieri (F. Murray Abraham in an Oscar-winning performance), Amadeus is gripping, dark, hideous and alluring, a film that dares to create as grand a narrative as the composers it focuses on.

Although a fantasy based on real-life characters, Schaffer’s portrait of consuming jealousy and the gnawing gap between excellence and genius has held resonance for audiences far beyond a literal telling of the facts. Ornate and sumptuous, but also with the delicacy of human emotions grand and small, Amadeus was a box office smash on release and a deserved Oscar best picture winner. Discover the version that audiences fell in love with forty years ago in a new restoration.