Amadeus: the Art of Making People Hear and Listen Film Analysis

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Creating a film about a genius is far more complicated a task than one might have thought. Although the life of a genius is much like a tracer bullet, watching the path of the one whose works once shattered the world is not an easy job to do. It takes a genius of a filmmaker as well to make the audience see the entangled story full of inner contradictions and misconceptions as it is, making the false legends come off like a snakeskin changing.

Despite the complicity of the plot, it is often not even the story itself that creates obstacles on the way of the filmmaker, but the specific effects used to add the specific flair of the reality to the film, persuading the audience that the story of the genius described is no more a myth, but a true story of a man enslaved by the great talent of his, both a martyr and a blessed man.

In his movie Amadeus, Milos Forman suggested a new image of Mozart, quite unusual to the public. Getting used to see Mozart only as a figure almost mythological, whose entire life can be split into twp periods, before being a recognized genius and the period of his incredible glory, the audience was rather surprised with seeing the backstreet of Mozart’s life, the tragedy within him which led to creating the amazing pieces of music which now are considered doubtlessly as the timeless classics.

Forman creates another image of Mozart, a man unhappy and torn by the conflict within. What helped Forman to depict Mozart this artfully, make the audience naturally feel the torments of the lead character with the tips of their fingers? Naturally, only the music could. The sound effects used in the movie areas important as ever, since the entire movie is all about a man whose life was a musical composition created by someone else – by God, perhaps?

Although sound effects are often considered a question of minor importance in film-making, it proves one of the elements which make the film complete. Most people treat the visual image as the key aspect of the film, but in fact the sound is. Creating a film, one must not let the wrong sound spoil the whole picture:

Often people don’t consider sound as an important factor – it is. Design the sound fully before the shoot. One or two badly framed shots will not ruin a film but bad sound will – it will lose its audience. Sound and image work together to create the film’s atmosphere, as well as giving the audience dialogue to listen to. (Evans 2006, p. 161)

Because of the fact that many filmmakers treat sound effects as something that can come to a conflict with the visual elements of the movie, the films made so far can be considered as the triumph of the visual effects, not the sound. Indeed, the arguments provided seem quite logical, since they emphasize the necessity to stress the visual image, not the voice of the actors, or the noises in the rear.

Providing a sufficient background for the lad characters, the sound effects are not usually used so that they could speak the ideas of the movie separately, as if the sounds were the characters of the film as well. On the contrary, the sounds in movies are stiffened into wallpaper for the premises where the action takes place.

Even with the reasons understood, this still seems an abuse of a sound, for the latter could have been used as the expressive means much more powerful than a bare image. Not providing a full picture, giving only hints, sounds could be the way to show what underlies the film. As Evans (2006) noticed,

Audio is one of the areas of making a film that is often the last to be resolved. Since the nature of film-making is primarily a visual medium, it is often seen that music and sound are there to prop up the images; by the time shooting has finished and you view the footage tapes, it is not easy to consider that there is a further element which can radically alter the effect of the carefully won visuals. (p. 258)

Emphasizing the necessity to maintain a balance between the audio and visual effects in a movie, Evans (2006) is sticking to the idea of the movie elements intertwined in a most harmonic combination. To a certain extent, Evans is right about the necessity to level the sound-to-image relations which occur in the movie, for this is where usually the key to harmony of the movie is. However, in some specific cases, it is necessary to break the balance between these two elements.

Once a movie shot tells a story of a man extraordinary to this world, the imbalance is needed to stress the peculiarities of the genius’s life and to make the audience see the complicity of the character whose life they are watching. For instance, shooting a movie about an artist, it would be a good idea to focus on the visual elements, so that the movie could seem a snapshot of the genius’s life indeed.

Likewise, a story which tells about the life path of a musician should be focused on the sounds, taking all audio elements into a whirlwind of a musical symphony. The symphony of one’s life, it would be an incredible and daring experiment which would depict the genius, shedding the light on all facets of his talent. With such approach, the spectrum of the ideas emerging would be incredibly broad. That is what Milos Forman actually did. He made a masterpiece of a movie with help of the specific sound effects.

Taking a closer look at the movie and the way its sound effects system was composed, it is necessary to mark that there were two basic ways in which the music was implanted into a movie. One of them was creating the background music which helped to set the tone for the story and make the audience feel the atmosphere of the times in which Mozart lived and created his masterpieces.

In spite of the fact that this element of musical effects only provided the settings for the movie and did not have a meaning of its own, the importance of this part used is incredible. Emphasizing the importance of the role of the background music, Evans (2006) notes that it is at times even more significant than the key soundtrack, for the music from the underneath influences the subconscious of the audience and contributes to forming the general impression of the film:

Sound motif is yet another way in which the aural element of a film can reduce the load of the visual in telling a story. As with visual motif, this is used by the director to convey ideas that help the plot, giving it extra depth. (Evans p. 263)

Speaking of the music which was in the limelight as the plot of the film, it is needless to say that Forman was most reasonable to use the work of Mozart; yet making this quite predictable choice, yet it is necessary to mention that Forman’s choice of Mozart’s Symphony #25 in G Minor can be called only a mystery of inspiration. The magnificent melody which paves the life of the great is not merely a successfully chosen soundtrack, but the life of Mozart put into music.

One of the most famous musical compositions of the Great Austrian, this symphony stirs the audience to the depth and makes them feel the very essence of the musical genius of Mozart. Without a single tint of mourn for the genius who left so soon, the melody which accompanies the movie is more than a tribute to Mozart. Symphony #25 is Mozart’s life. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

One of the key elements of the movie which makes the plot even sharper and filled with the inner conflict is the melody which accompanies the struggle between Mozart and his teacher, Salieri. In this scene, what Forman tried to catch in his grasp was the tiny detail which made Mozart this great. The detail elusive and imperceptible, it did not escape the grasp of Forman and opened like a beautiful flower in front of the astounded audience.

Competing with Salieri, Mozart proves that the essence of the musical genius is to make music soar in the air, he deprived it of the dreadful theatricality and makes it natural. Brining the melody to its natural state, giving Pan the right to guide him, Mozart adds vivacity to the stiff melody of his teacher and creates a composition much more meaningful than the one of Salieri.

Not able to bear the shame of being outrun, Salieri starts hating the gifted young man and wishes of his death – it is all spoken with help of the melody, without any single word let out! A truly amazing sound effect, the competition between Mozart and Salieri is the core of the movie, where all human feelings are mixed, happiness together with envy, shame and delight mixing into hatred, everything dusted with a pinch of reticence.

It is apparent that the final melody which sounds in the movie also has a voice of its own, discovering new depth in the life story of the composer. The music, light and tender, shows that the story is not over and that the composer will always stay in people’s hearts and minds, with the fabulous works of his. Lifting spirits high, the fantastic music is not merely a sound effect but a life being of its own, with the immortal soul and character worthy of a human.

The symphony is more than a good way to summarize Mozart’s life score. Forman picked this very melody in attempt to persuade people that the music of the composer was his own immortal soul, and, listening to the symphony of his, one feels the awe to the great genius of Mozart.

Sounding triumphal, then lulling people into dreamy meditations about the essence of life, the iridescent sounds create the impression of a man whose life was a constant balance between his desire to create divine music and his inner struggle. The symphony is the red carpet rolled in front of Mozart, his farewell to the world saying that he is not leaving for good, and that the musical compositions which he wrote will always stay memoirs of his incredible life journey which took him from the depth of the abyss to the Olympus.

The approach which Forman takes to achieve the needed result is incredible. Denying all the postulates of creating a movie which were suggested by Fianetti (2010), yet following the idea which was suggested by the author of the book, Forman works a miracle on the movie. On the one hand, Forman denies the approach of creating the movie theme “from the scratch”, which Fianetti (2010) suggests, for there is not a trace of improvisation through the entire movie, all its sound effects based on the works of Mozart.

In contrast to the idea that movie should have the musical effects absolutely unique, so that it could be distinguished among the range of the like, Forman makes the film sound effects all based on Mozart’s compositions, picking the most famous ones, which people all around the world are bound to know.

Apart from the music and the dialogues between the characters, there are very few sounds in the movie, which makes people focus on the incredible music of the composer and to see the conflict deeper, with all the shades and tints of the drama as vividly depicted as possible. In contrast to what a typical movie suggests with its sound effects aiming at making the film ever closer to the reality, the sound effects in Amadeus are not diverse – being quite scanty, they provide a deeper insight on the core of the movie, filled with the fantastical music of the young composer.

A movie about Mozart does not need any additional sounds but the symphonies which the genius wrote. In other words, the abundance of sounds would have made the movie messy and would have blurred the idea of the film. In this very specific case, the movie should not contain any outside elements so that the key idea could be put in the very limelight.

The so-called ambient sounds would have only spoiled the effect the film produced, and Forman understood it pretty well. Although he knew well that the background sounds are an important part of a film, he decided to neglect the rules prescribed to make an outstanding piece of art:

When you shoot in a room or any other location there is a constant sound reflecting the environment unique to that place. Each time you move the camera and microphone position for different shots, the ambient sound will change slightly. (Evans 2006, p. 164)

The abovementioned description of background sounds would have suited the movie unless a small detail would not have intruded. The fact is that the only background sound for the scenes in the movie is silence. Providing one of the most impressive sound effects possible, the absence of irrelevant sounds makes the music played by Mozart ever greater, showing his genius in the full.

Reference List

Evans, R. (2006). Practical DV Filmmaking. Burlington, MA: Focal Press.

Fianetti, L. (2010). Understanding Movies, 12^th Edition. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Print.

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Amadeus: the Art of Making People Hear and Listen Film Analysis

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