Drama into Film:The Shaffer Situation/C.l. GIANAKARIS

February 20, 2018October 24, 2018 admin

Close observers of theatre hardly can be faulted for their curiosity, if not
downright concern, when a significant work for the stage is adapted for the
movie screen. Transplanting plays to film always has been chancy, with rather
more misses than hits. One can point to exceptions, of course, such as movies
made of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Tennessee
Williams’s Streetcar Named Desire, John Osborne’s The Entertainer, Harold
Pinter’s Betrayal, Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser,
and a handful of others. But even in these instances, the acclaim typically is
critical rather than popular in the commercial sense. 1 While one lists successes
such as these, one also must be conscious of the far greater number of
disappointing movie adaptations made from hit dramas.
Nor, incidentally, is the general situation much different with novels on the
screen. Possibly the more amorphous shapes of fiction permit the novel to be
“massaged” more readily to fit requirements of the film medium. That capacity
would help to explain why movies based on novels have proved aesthetically
satisfying with greater frequency. The success ratio of fiction into film
therefore stands arguably higher than that of drama. 2 The irony is unavoidable,
then, that despite obvious affinities of dialogue, scenic structure, and the rest,
drama ends up more resistant than fiction to the format of motion pictures. 3
Why are dramas so difficult to transfer happily to the silver screen? What
unique hurdles stand before a screenwriter when adapting a proven stage
vehicle for the movies? If the conceptual essence is cored out in a film version,
why would (or should) a successful writer submit his creations to commercial
moviemakers? Or, stated differently, what aesthetic compensations make it
worthwhile for a distinguished author to relinquish his work to Hollywood?
These questions form the general subject of our discussion.
The larger issue of interconnected cinematic aesthetics and techniques
admittedly invites abstract theorizing, a problem we hope to avert by tightening
C.J. GIANAKAR1S
our focus to a single major writer and his situation. As case in point, we shall
center our attention on the plays of Peter Shaffer. More explicitly, Amadeus
will serve as our chief illustration among Shaffer’s plays, because it recently
was adapted into a high-budget motion picture under the guidance of
Academy-Award-winning director Milos Forman. Our concentration on the
Shaffer situation should permit us, through a process of induction, to reach
answers to some of the broader questions posed above. Further, focusing on
Shaffer allows us rich examples with which to work. First, Shaffer already has
distinguished himself as one of the premium playwrights of our day.
Accordingly, on an auxiliary level, a consideration of his works as films should
shed valuable light on his stage techniques as well. Second, his case is
potentially rewarding because so many of his hit dramas have been chosen by
film producers for conversion to the movie theatre, thereby providing multiple
illustrations for reference. Third, it is especially worthwhile for purposes of
comparison that Shaffer himself was the adapter for two of his recent plays
refashioned as films. Changes in one form from the other obviously can be very
informative within logistical and aesthetic perspectives.
Finally, and most thought-provoking, the Shaffer situation offers an
opportunity to observe firsthand potential pitfalls in the adapting of literary
triumphs for the screen. Most of the movies made of Shaffer’s plays have fallen
far short of the popUlarity – and excellence – of his original pieces. To
illustrate, the roster of Shaffer’s works turned into motion pictures is long and
distinguished. It includes Five Finger Exercise (movie, 1962), The Royal Hunt
of the Sun (movie, 1968), The Private Ear and The Public Eye (movies, 1972),
Equus (movie, 1977), and now Amadeus (movie, 1984). Nor have the casts
assigned to these films lacked for talented stars, among them Rosalind Russell,
Jack Hawkins, Maximillian Schell, Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw,
Richard Burton, Peter Firth, and F. Murray Abraham. To baffle casual
speculation further, whereas the earlier movie scripts were written by different
screenwriters, both Equus and Amadeus were adapted as screenplays by
Shaffer himself. We thus return to a specific question, whose answers we can
employ to extrapolate more general conclusions: aside from Amadeus , how can
Shaffer’s enormously popular theatre dramas., featuring first-rate actors in
their cinematic versions, nevertheless fail to distinguish themselves in the
movie theatre?
In Shaffer’s case, the pathway to involvement in the movie medium has
been bumpy and strewed with disappointments. Until the making of the
Amadeus film, there has been little to cheer Shaffer about films drawn from his
dramas. The first of such adaptations for the screen, Five Finger Exercise,
came off as lackluster. The second, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, was just
dreadful as a result of the mishmash of acting and directorial styles. Another,
Equus, though powerful in certain respects, emerged all the same as fatally
flawed because of misguided decisions by the director. Moviemakers, and film
Drama into Film: The Shaffer Situation 85
directors especially, seem puzzled about how to capture Shaffer’s highly
theatrical plays on celluloid. It is little wonder that in my own earliest
conversations with him, Shaffer expressed misgivings about trying his luck
again with movies. 4 As late as 1982, he continued to dismiss anyone’s giving
serious consideration to those earlier disappointing movie attempts with his
plays. In correspondence that year, he wrote with total sincerity: “Really, I
think my films are best left alone. They are all terrible …. They bore and
depress me, even in retrospect.,,5 On a related matter, Shaffer also has made it
clear that he does not necessarily need or expect his plays to be transformed into
films in the first place. When asked about Amadeus before the movie project
was announced, he said: “I don’t accept the notion that if a play is successful it’s
got to automatically be turned into a film.,,6 Before the deal was struck for the
Amadeus movie version, then, we have no reason to think that Shaffer was
eager to return to the movie wars. Quite the contrary. He was apprehensive and
skeptical about such prospects, and he had to be convinced.
The absence of effective cinematic equivalents for Shaffer’s source plays is
implicit in the earlier failed films of his works. Shaffer’s cautious attitude
toward future movie adaptations emphasizes the tacit tug of war that occurs
when any literary success is made subject for the screen. In the present
discussion, we cannot do justice to the range of complex elements entering the
process of adaptation in moviemaking. Nevertheless, to reach a fair and helpful
assessment not only of Shaffer’s situation, but of the universal problems
involved in film adaptations, we shall codify a few fundamental truths about the
adapting operation. This exercise should produce a frame of reference for the
separate and frequently competing value structures inherent in shooting movies
and writing dramas.
The differences in aesthetic premises underlying live stage productions and
motion pictures provide endless fascination to theorists of both modes. Each
medium – not surprisingly – seeks to take fullest advantage of its own unique
strengths; and conflicts arise when the artistic values of the two collide. In
short, we might say that differing values lead to competition between two
contending approaches for representing the drama scene. In a stimulating study
entitled Cineliteracy [:] Film Among the Arts, Charles Eidsvik phrases the
matter this way: “Cinematic innovators from Griffith to Bergman .. , have
attempted not to imitate theater but to do what the theater can do while
exploiting to the maximum their resources as film makers.,,7
What are some of these discrete values which can become the basis for
contention between allied dramatic arts? At the risk of damaging oversimplification,
let us try framing the situation thus: motion pictures are primarily (not
exclusively) a visual medium; theatre is primarily (not exclusively) verbal,
hence largely metaphoric. Theorists such as Panofsky, Kracauer, Bazin,
Eidsvik, and even Canby suggest obvious corollaries. Among the most
self-evident is that motion pictures emphasize “motion” and “pictures”: they
86 C.J. GIANAKARIS
excel at creating a visual reality realistically. Their natural zone of greatest
effectiveness involves that part of the physical world that can be seen and
known phenomenologically. The live stage, on the other hand, best exploits its
natural potential when creating a fictionalized reality metaphorically. Its forte
lies within the realm of thought and speculation – the “what if’s” in life. 8
Consequently, in an important way, we can identify the problem as a factor of
the degree of realism in the source drama and the resulting picture.
Vincent Canby, an articulate spokesman for both film and theatre, recently
considered this sensitive relationship between movies and the stage. In an
essay called “Stage and Screen Go Their Separate Ways,” Canby crystallizes
several facts concerning these sometimes antagonistic art modes:
[A]ll serious playwrights everywhere are increasingly committed to the creation of a
kind of stage literature that is complete unto itself, which cannot easily be adapted to the
needs of the screen without compromising the particular art of the original.
These playwrights, including Mr. Shaffer, understand the theater to be a kind of
prison, but one whose severe restrictions – whose unrealities – make possible a kind of
language you will respond to nowhere else. It’s a place where the audience becomes an
active participant in the exercise of the playwright’s imagination, and where artifice,
instead of being exhausting, as it can be in movies, is liberating. 9
Not coincidentally, the Amadeus film and playwright Shaffer are central in
Canby’s discussion. Shaffer is a logical case in point, given Canby’s thesis
concerning the “unrealities” of the stage, because the source for much of the
friction between Shaffer’s art and the demands of cinema resides in the dramatist’s
imaginative theatricality, where metaphor and nonrealism dominate.
Allowing for the myriad preconditions impinging on any screenwriter, let
alone the natural defensive instincts of a prominent dramatist where his work is
concerned, it is a wonder that successful playwrights ever relinquish their
pieces to moviemakers. 10 If Shaffer himself manifested no driving interest in
having Amadeus filmed, how did the movie come about? Bringing to the screen
that exceptionally popular and controversial drama in a genuine sense
amounted to a concession on the dramatist’s part. Shaffer himself furnishes the
answers. In an article written for Film Comment in 1984, Shaffer declares that,
“but for the enthusiasm of Milos Forman, I doubt if there would be a film of
Amadeus at all. ,,11 Because Amadeus embedded within its texture so many
theatrical approaches and devices, the risks in any film conversion were great.
One or two additional links in Shaffer’s chain of decisions will help complete
for us the sequence leading to the Amadeus movie.
Shaffer’s eventual involvement in filmmaking arose as a defensive response,
not out of zeal. A specific turning point was reached because of the
unbe1ievabl y bad film made of The Royal Hunt of the Sun. That fiasco proved a
painful but effective learning experience for Shaffer. During interview sessions
Drama into Film: The Shaffer Situation
in 1980, I asked Shaffer what involvement he had had with that movie. His
response was blunt: “Nothing. It taught me a lesson, in a way. I mean, I shall
never not do my own films again. It was terrible.,,12
Shaffer was true to his word. When Equus was contracted for the movie
screen, he made certain that he was connected with the operation (as the writer
of the movie script, it turned out) to keep an eye on the project. Unfortunately,
the Equus film brougpt Shaffer nothing but added grief. Despite the respected
director, Sidney Lumet, and such exceptional performers as Richard Burton,
Peter Firth, and Joan Plowright, the movie of Equus missed the mark, ending
up a box-office disaster although it earned both male leads Academy Award
nominations. Nonetheless, even with fine actors, a knowledgeable director
(Lumet is a three-time Oscar nominee), and Shaffer’s own script as the point of
departure, the film never approached the effectiveness of its source. One
crucial handicap to its success was a boycott supported by a national movement
for animal rights. The issue of cruelty to animals was raised when Lumet
insisted on simulating the blinding of the horses in ultrarealistic fashion.
Shaffer once more felt betrayed by the moviemakers. He previously had been
associated as co screenwriter with the successful transformation of William
Golding’s novel Lord o/the Flies for the screen in 1962 and therefore had come
to the writing of the movie script for Equus as no novice. The ultimate problem
with the movie lay not in its script, but in the basic approach taken in filming it.
About the resulting film, Shaffer said: “I wrote the script originally. Not that it
did me much good, because the script I wrote was not really shot. I think … I
did much more imaginative work than was shot. … I don’t want to attack
anybody particularly. Sidney Lumet did a very competent job. And he included
me in all the time. What depressed me about the film is that it didn’t have any of
the images I wanted to see in it. I was very disappointed in the visual side of
it.” 13
In private correspondence, Shaffer used far harsher terms to denote the
irreparable damage done to his play through the movie’s extreme literalness.
Shaffer’s displeasure became clear when he lent me his personal copy of the
Equus movie script he had written. A comparison of that text with the film shot
revealed a major discrepancy. Lumet, as he had claimed, used a good deal of
the screenplay as written by Shaffer. At the same time, Lumet chose to ignore
the essential stage directions Shaffer had given. In them, a visually attuned
director had available an invaluable blueprint of filmic equations for the
metaphors of the play. Lumet failed in particular with those pivotal episodes
when Alan Strang is abreacting. To illustrate, Alan’s nude, midnight horseback
rides were shot in the movie exactly as such; even the artificial lights required
by the cameras accidentally show up in the final cut that was released
commercially. Most desperately misguided of all, however, were the shot
decisions in the final stable scene. There, Strang encounters his sexuality in
clinical fashion through Jill, in total, realistic nudity but without any sense of
88 C.]. GIANAKARIS
love. There, too, Alan confronts his god Equus physically – not spiritually – by
realistically hacking out the horses’ eyes. Absolutely none of the mystery so
central to the play is retained in the movie. 14 Nothing is left to the imagination;
all the spiritual dimensions of the drama were excised by Lumet in the film.
Without question, Lumet simply failed to locate an appropriate filmic approach
to capture the true sense of Shaffer’s original work.
In 1979, two years after the Equus film, Milos Forman happened to be in
London seeking actors for his movie Ragtime. Robert Lantz, his agent as well
as Shaffer’s, invited him to see a play while there. The play was Amadeus.
Without even waiting for the second act, Forman sought out Shaffer to propose
that a movie be made of Amadeus. 15 By then hardened to the realities of making
motion pictures, Shaffer remained hesitant to accept the proposal with which,
Shaffer has written, Forman “persisted for two years.,,16
Aside from the earlier cinematic misfortunes which had befallen him,
Shaffer was also restrained by awareness that the fundamental theatre-versusmovies
combat would need to be fought again. Further, collaborating with
Milos Forman would mean dealing with another strong artistic will. Forman, as
Oscar winner in 1975 for his film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was like
Shaffer successful, energetic, and absolute in his tastes. Shaffer describes his
initial encounters with Forman and the Amadeus project:
When I asked him what he would do with my piece, he told me what he would not do:
tum it into a stagey hybrid, neither play nor picture. He also pointed out that the film of a
play is really a new work, another fulfillment of the same impulse which had created the
original. The adapter’s task was to explore many paths in order to emerge in the end at
the same emotional place. During this process a fair amount of demolition work would
go on, some of it perhaps painful to the author. In the case of Amadeus, its operatic
stylization would probably have to go, and its language would have to be made less
formal. … 17
The details are now widely known about Forman’s collaborative efforts at
writing the screenplay for Amadeus. Starting on February I, 1982, for four
months, the two creative masters worked together – five days a week, twelve
hours a day – to produce the script into which “nothing went … that both did not
agree upon.,,18 Shaffer wrote in a letter during that period: “The work with
Forman is hard and trying. So far there’s not one scene from the play in the
film!,,19 Collaborating with Forman must have exacted a psychic price,
particularly since Forman’s often repeated modus operandi for adapting drama
to the screen involves “tearing the play apart and putting it together in a new
form. ,,20 In this process, the original drama serves only as building materials
for another construct altogether. All the same, some other level of Shaffer’s
creative impulse was apparently stimulated by Forman’s determination to seek
out new means to fulfill previous objectives. For Shaffer, it eventually became
Drama into Film: The Shaffer Situation
clear, the Amadeus film would provide a challenge for expressing his
interrelated concepts about Mozart, music, creative genius, and metaphysics in
another, new format.
Shaffer stated his thinking on the matter late in 1984:
Certainly I was not afraid of new approaches. In composing the play I had spent over a
year simply finding a way of beginning it. … Why not join a brilliantly talented film
director in even further exploration? Of course partnership would mean permitting him
to write the script with me, alone in his house – the Forman method, and one not easy
for an author to countenance – but I reckoned that I had ultimately far more to learn than
to lose from such an adventure, and finally I agreed. 21
To me, Shaffer’s quoted statement could not be merely self-serving rationalization.
In the letter he wrote which is cited above (March 1982), Shaffer
acknowledges that working with Forman indeed was energy draining. But he
also .states there: “I just trust that it [the Amadeus project] is all for the best! At
least I’m learning a little about thinking cinematically. If that is ultimately
important I don’t mind.”
Once he made up his mind to pursue the Amadeus movie version, Shaffer
participated in its making every step along the way. Fortunately, he shed his
normal reluctance to speak about films and his plays. His comments –
published or personal- about the shooting of Amadeus, when added to those of
other close observers, form a chronicle of this astute man of the theatre tackling
– and mastering – another medium. It is true that substantial monetary reward
awaited him if the resulting motion picture proved commercially strong. 22 But
there were other motives for his acceptance.
First, there was the obvious defensive reason spoken of earlier. Shaffer
needed to make certain that the eventual movie would not emerge a mangled
embarrassment, distorting his original drama. Although difficult to claim as a
faultless masterpiece, the Amadeus picture that was released late in 1984
proved impressive in many ways. And, as we shall see, many of its strongest
features can be traced to Shaffer’s involvement. Second, beyond assuring that
the basic integrity of his source play was maintained, Shaffer made ingenious
use of the movie to fulfill a long-held objective unattainable in the legitimate
theatre. Amadeus, the film, marks the next step in an extraordinary artistic
odyssey: it represents an innovative attempt to employ film in conveying
abstract values through a fusion of the visual and the musical. 23
What means did Shaffer use to seek out the solution for his combined
aesthetic and metaphysical conundrum? To begin, he realigned the potential
constrictions of the cinematic method to force that medium to serve his own
purpose. If he had to remove from his film script any of the “play’s staginess,”
he nonetheless found compensating means to project his notion regarding
Mozart and music. 24 Shaffer’s most striking and effective technique was to
90 C.J. GIANAKARIS
steep the film in great quantities of Mozart’s own music on screen and in the
background, via the sound track. Shaffer has called the movie “a fantasia on
events in Mozart’s life,” and as such it represents his further evolved
speculations on the deeper meanings of great art and music in the lives of flawed
Drama into Film: The Shaffer Situation 91
human beings. Mozart’s life, based wholly on music, deserves the radical
employment of music in the film as correlative. The remainder of our
discussion, therefore, will document what Shaffer wanted to achieve in the film
version and how he went about trying to effect his aims.
Why did Shaffer believe that he could discipline music, an abstract art form,
to serve him as both theme and technical tool in the movie Amadeus? Audiences
should be aware that music has always held a unique position in Shaffer’s own
life and career. At one time a music critic, Shaffer has embedded music in each
of his previous dramas for the stage as important thematic metaphors. 25 His
concentration on Mozart is a natural extension of his lifelong pursuit of the
transcendent values he knew existed in musical art. Even music commentators
unhappy with Shaffer’s characterization of Mozart in Amadeus grudgingly
admit that: “There is an enormous amount of material about Mozart, and Mr.
Shaffer apparently has assimilated every last word.,,26 Any remaining doubts
about Shaffer’s mastery of facts concerning Mozart or about his sincerity in
dwelling on the Mozart materials should have been dispelled by his impassioned
testament entitled “Paying Homage to Mozart.” That essay, which
appeared late in 1984, codified Shaffer’s personal belief in a metaphysics
constructed on the excellence of human artistic attainment. He writes: “My own
apprehension of the divine is very largely esthetic. I am aware that this is by
no means a general condition …. Not to be vague, the creation of the ‘C Minor
Mass’ or the final act of ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ seem to me to give a point to
evolution. Most human activities do not.,,27 To manifest man’s craving for
some ultimate ideal in his life, Shaffer originally fashioned a Salieri who alone
92 C.J. GIANAKARIS
would recognize the divinity in the music pouring from Mozart’s pen. Shaffer
expands on this point, when writing: “What I wanted to emerge clearly from the
play is the obsession of a man, Salieri … with finding an absolute in music. ,,28
Shaffer refused to call the movie just an adaptation; he considered it rather “a
parallel work” to the original play. 29 His design relied on the fact that films are
amenable to the inclusion of much music, compared to the stage. Through
music, Shaffer hoped to help movie audiences understand what it was in
Mozart’s music that became Salieri’s ideal as well as his torment. To that end,
Shaffer wrote into his film script detailed instructions for vast quantities of
Mozart selections on the sound track. Mozart’s career “arena” was the musical
performance of his works; accordingly, Shaffer built into the action numerous
recital, concert, and operatic episodes connoting Mozart’s artistic life and the
general musical world of Vienna in his day. Furthermore, to ensure that the
script’s musical directions were carried out appropriately and imaginatively,
Shaffer and Forman contracted one of the finest Mozartian conductors in the
world to serve as Music Director. Their hiring of Neville Marriner, reported
American Film, was an attempt “to give those unschooled in classical music at
least a fighting chance at understanding what made Mozart the nemesis of
court composer Antonio Salieri. ,,30
With so much of Mozart’s music playing on the sound track, and with
samples of Salieri’s music, as well, Shaffer intended that audiences should
actually hear a contrast between Mozart’s voice and the conventional musical
sounds of the era. Audiences should also comprehend, as a result, the allusions
in the script to “too many notes” – the accusation aimed at Mozart’s music by
taste setters in the court of Emperor Joseph II – and to “tonic and dominant” –
Mozart’s description of the boring Italian musical style of the time. Thus,
people attending the movie could draw their own conclusions concerning the
musical tastes of Mozart’s day which reflected disapproval of his daring,
threatening tonalities and musical forms. 31
Shaffer’s concept for an enveloping musical backdrop won Forman’s
acceptance on a purely separate basis. Forman envisioned a Mozart figure
portrayed as more sympathetic in the film than he was shown in the theatre.
Forman also wanted Mozart positioned more prominently in the action: “The
portrait of Mozart in the film will be more balanced …. We are trying to show
more a drama of a man who, without knowing it, is destroying himself.,,32
Shaffer agreed, at least on cinematic grounds, saying: “In the film he [Mozart]
is a more ordinary, rather childish man. His marriage and his relations with his
father are treated in a more detailed way. We had to humanize him and make
him a more rounded character. This is sensible because of the literalness of the
camera.,,33 Mozart’s own compositions, played throughout the film, help to
keep attention on him at all times, while also providing a shocking contrast
between the “voice of God” and the “obscene child” – both of course being the
single person Mozart.
Drama into Film: The Shaffer Situation 93
Mozart’s music permeates the film in strategic ways. In sheer quantity, first,
the amount of music performed on screen and heard off screen is enormous,
making the Amadeus movie a veritable musical bonanza for audiences. Of
approximately I70 scenes appearing in the screenplay which actually were
shot, seventy include explicit musical directions detailing what pieces of music
are to be heard, where in the action, and serving what function. 34 Some of the
music is shown being performed within the action, while some is used as
musical background. Altogether, over a dozen episodes feature Mozart’s music
being played or sung in a variety of programs on screen. These excerpts, of
varying lengths, include several musical types. There are individual arias,
sometimes entire acts, from several operas: Abduction from the Seraglio,
Marriage of Figaro , Don Giovanni, Magic Flute, Zaide, and a brief section of
Salieri’s opera Axur. These scenes, meant to represent command performances
before Austria’s royalty, are staged in rich opulence and include some
choreography designed for the film by Twyla Tharp. In addition, portions of
orchestral music by Mozart are performed on screen as part of a concert scene;
and other sections of orchestral music are heard on the sound track as musical
counterpoint to the action of a given scene. Such works include Symphony No.
25 (K. I83), Symphony No. 29 (K. 201), Serenade for Winds (K. 361), and
Symphonie Concertante (K. 364). Several piano concertos are used, again as
musical concerts built into the plot line or as “sound-over” on the sound track:
Concerto for Two Pianos (K. 365), Piano Concerto in E flat (K. 482), and
Piano Concerto in D minor (K. 466) are heard in the film. Finally, besides
miscellaneous incidental folk music and snatches of other Mozart works,
extended passages of choral music occur on the sound track: the Mass in C
minor (K. 427), Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, and Mozart’s last, unfinished
Requiem Mass (K. 626).
A simple gathering together of the chief musical pieces heard in the movie
fails utterly to convey the many techniques used and effects gained thereby.
Scenes featuring a musical performance in the plot – usually a concert or opera
– are designed to fit the action with blueprint accuracy. Even when a complete
act or movement is not shown, the section used is surgically inserted to allow
the music to breathe and bloom, without bringing the plot action to a halt. One
cannot fail to perceive that Mozart’s music, as such, is given highest priority in
the film. Scenes were deliberately planned to fit the compositions, not the other
way around. In published interviews, Marriner expressed pleasure and surprise
at this unique situation: “We really put the cart before the horse – it’s very
unusual to record the music so comprehensively and shoot the film around it.
Milos and Peter were very keen from the start that the music should be
untouched – that this should be the music as Mozart wrote it and not
arrangements.,,36 As a result, perhaps not since The Red Shoes from the late
I940S has music played such an organic part in the shape and soul of a motion
picture.
94 C. J. GIAN AKARIS
Not unexpectedly, in scenes not picturing musical performances, the
background score is taken entirely from Mozart. Even then, the excerpts are not
cut or arranged, but left in Mozart’s notations and orchestrations. One result is a
welcome crispness. At the same time that the music enriches the visual
moment, it reinforces our awareness of Mozart’s unsurpassed genius at
composition. The film breathes Mozart’s music, creating an effect of its
omnipresence to underscore Salieri’ s paranoia concerning the threat of his
younger colleague’s work.
A striking and original effect is gained by the use of music to segue from one
episode to another, emphasizing causal and associative relationships in the
process. This brilliant coup de cinema in Shaffer’s script always evokes great
positive responses from audiences seeing the movie. Two effective
illustrations (out of many) will help to confirm the originality of the technique
which depends again on using music flexibly. Scene 49 of the screenplay
involves Salieri’s voice pupil Katherina Cavalieri. Before commencing her
lesson, she inquires of Salieri about potential singing roles for her in Mozart’s
rumored new opera. Salieri attempts to dissuade her from considering
association with Mozart; he seeks to halt further discussion on the subject by
starting Katherina to work on her vocal exercises. The script directions offer a
tactic for the action to leap forward, while also giving us a glimpse of
Katherina’s stubborn determination:
Scene 49. (continued) He SALIERI strikes the chord again, firmly. CAVALIERI sings her
next scale, then another one, doing her exercises in earnest. As she hits a sustained high
note the orchestral accompaniment in the middle of “Marter Aller Arten” from Il
Seraglio comes in underneath, and the music changes from exercises to this
exceedingly florid Aria. We DISSOLVE on the singer’s face, and she is suddenly not
merely turbaned, but painted and dressed totally in a Turkish manner, and we are on:
Scene 50 INT. THE STAGE OF AN OPERA HOUSE. VIENNA. 1780’S ….
The heroine of the Opera (CAVALIERI) is in full cry addressing the PASHA with scorn and
defiance. 37
Equally stunning in effect is the connection made between Mozart’s crude,
insensitive mother-in-law, Frau Weber, and the cruel Queen of the Night in
Mozart’s opera Magic Flute. In Scene 151, Frau Weber fiercely berates Mozart
for not treating Constanza better. Her shrill harangue perfectly bridges the
action into the opera performance in Scene 152. The script says:
Scene 151. (continued) And with a scream MADAME WEBER’S voice turns into the shrill
packing coloratura of the Second Act Aria of the Queen of the Night, in the MAGIC
FLUTE.
DISSOL VE TO:
Scene 152. SCHIKANEDER’S THEATRE BY THE WElDEN. NIGHT …. Onstage we see the
Drama into Film: The Shaffer Situation 95
QUEEN OF THE NIGHT fantastically costumed, furiously urging her daughter to kill
SARASTRO. 38
A final specimen revealing the musical dimensions of the Amadeus picture
comprises the entire late section, from Scene 162 through 173A. In an amazing
episode that is just barely credible, the exhausted and dying Mozart lies
propped up in his bed, dictating to Salieri the remainder of the partly done
Requiem Mass. As Mozart weakly mutters out the melodic line and vocal and
instrumental directions, Salieri frantically scratches them down on paper. As
soon as the notations are imprinted on paper, the sounded music of what had
just been dictated is heard over the sound track. By such fits and starts, verbal
dictation is conveyed to paper, the written version in tum transformed into the
powerful music of the Requiem which we then hear.
Simultaneously, brief visual shots interjected into the dictation pattern show
Mozart’s wife, Constanza, boarding a coach to begin an overnight journey back
home to be with her husband. The total effect is of contrapuntal visual shots and
musical phrases. The music comes from Mozart’s glorious Requiem, and it
floods the movie theatre to accompany the visual portraits of worried wife,
frenetic rival Salieri copying furiously, and fading Mozart. The fusion of visual
pictures with enveloping music creates a powerful movie effect not soon
forgotten. Admittedly, music plays a key role in the stage Amadeus. There,
however, as Shaffer has acknowledged, the play can accommodate only a set
amount of music “without subverting the drama and turning the event into a
concert.” He goes on to add that film, on the other hand, “positively welcomes
music in floods. ,,39 What had been snatches of musical phrases heard as
“sound-over” on the legitimate stage becomes a profusion of music flowing
around the audience in the movie theatre.
Has Shaffer’s huge dosage of music led to a successful rendering of
Amadeus? Box-office success is one matter, of course, and artistic success
possibly another. Commercially, the results are forthcoming as this discussion
is being written; aesthetically, we can say that the movie does achieve much of
Shaffer’s initial intention. The enormous investment of energy and money to
create this film in parallel forms to a musical composition pays off handsomely .
Visually, as well, the shooting of the film in Prague leads to more than simply a
sense of authenticity. More importantly, both the interior and exterior scenes
conjure up the sometimes opulent, sometimes austere, ambiance framing
Mozart’s own life and milieu. These aural and visual evocations are wholly
successful.
If one has reservations about the lavishly filmed Amadeus, they probably
grow out of problems introduced because of cinematic objectives. Despite
filling the scenes realistically with figures only alluded to in the play (e.g.,
Leopold Mozart, Frau Weber, Schikaneder, and others), Forman’s more literal
medium ends up actually simplifying the story’s conflict. The price for breadth?
C.J. GIANAKARIS
and scope is focus and complexity of thought. When rehabilitating the character
of Mozart, even modestly compared to the stage version, the movie leaves him
more an annoying, whinnying prodigal than a tragic figure whose own actions
betray his career time after time.
Concomitantly, as the center of the movie shifts away from Salieri and his
spiritual conundrum concerning art and godhead, the story line is simplified yet
further. For the movie, the main plot action becomes a straight-line tale of HOW
DID SALIERI RUIN MOZART? The “intrigue” quotient is diminished when motives
are set forth in such bold outline. As another result, the film too often takes on
an episodic rhythm. The episodic shape, in tum, leads to a longer movie than
perhaps needed. Fortunately, the supreme music of Mozart being played helps
soothe impatient auditors.
The movie of Amadeus, then, has permitted playwright Peter Shaffer an
opportunity to develop even further than in the play his conjectures on music
and art, and their possible relationship to the divine. Whether or not Shaffer has
in fact added something new to his concepts already stimulating the play’s
audiences is another matter. Only those experiencing both versions can
honestly respond, and then only for themselves.
NOTES
1 Vincent Canby, “Stage and Screen Go Their Separate Ways,” New York Times, 30
September 1984, sec. 2, pp. 1, 19.
2 Along with Canby, Michiko Kakutani has been concerned with the issue of film
adaptation in his several articles: “Books into Movies,” New York Times Book
Review, 10 July 1983, p. 39; “How ‘Amadeus’ Was Translated from Play to
Film,” New York Times, 16 September 1984, sec. 2, pp. 1, 20; and “The New
Writer vs. Hollywood,” New York Times, 25 April 1982, sec. 2, pp. I, 30.
3 Louis D. Giannetti, Understanding Movies (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972),
pp. 176- 181.
4 In July of 1980, Peter Shaffer allowed me time over a period of a week for
conversations and interviewing about his work. The tapes made of those talks
contain this information. All such citations will be referred to as Tapes
(1980) hereafter.
5 Letter to this writer from Peter Shaffer, dated 29 September 1982.
6 Kakutani, “How ‘Amadeus’ Was Translated,” p. I.
7 Charles Eidsvik, Cineliteracy[:] Film Among the Arts (New York, 1978), p. 233.
Consider, as well, Giannetti, p. 177.
8 Helpful on this point are the works I have cited by Canby and Eidsvik.
9 Canby, p. I.
10 Useful discussion in this regard appears in the articles by Kakutani already cited, as
well as in John Brady’s The Craft of the Screenwriter (New York, 1981) and
William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade[.} A Personal View of Hollywood
and Screenwriting (New York, 1983).
Drama into Film: The Shaffer Situation 97
I I Peter Shaffer, “Making the Screen Speak,” Film Comment, 20 (September-October
1984), 56.
12 Tapes (1980).
13 Ibid, and personal letter to author from Peter Shaffer (March 1982).
14 Shaffer noted (Tapes [1980]) that he could not bear to watch the blinding scene
when it was shot, nor can he look at it even now on the screen – so painful was
its crude literalism.
15 Henry Karnm, “Milos Forman Takes His Cameras and ‘Amadeus’ to Prague,” New
York Times, 29 May 1983, sec. 2, p. I.
16 Shaffer, “Making the Screen Speak,” 56.
17 Ibid. Shaffer had made similar observations previously: “Milos is infatuated with
the medium, with film. It parallels my own infatuation with the theater. Obsessed,
infatuated people get on very well with each other. But naturally, it’s a mixed
feeling. When somebody invades your mental territory it’s always alarming”
(quoted by Kamm, p. 15).
18 Kakutani, “How ‘Amadeus’ Was Translated,” p. 1. ,
19 Personal correspondence from Peter Shaffer (March 1982).
20 Kamm, p. 15.
21 Shaffer, “Making the Screen Speak,” 56.
22 According to information derived from interviews with Saul Zaentz, producer of
the Amadeus film, the production budget alone ran to eighteen million dollars,
with one million dollars earmarked for Shaffer, “deferred” (in Harlan Jacobson,
“As Many Notes as Required,” Film Comment, 20 [September-October 1984],
55)?
23 In a letter to the editor of the New York Times, Shaffer declared that he wanted
“triumphantly [to] blazon sound as the central obsession of the fable, even in a
visual medium” (New York Times, 14 October 1984, sec. 2, p. 8). Shaffer
was responding to a sniping article by Donal Henahan called “Never Mind
Salieri, Siissmayr Did It,” New York Times, 23 September 1984, sec. 2, pp. I,
21.
24 Canby, p. 19?
25 In extended conversations (Tapes [1980]), Shaffer surveyed how much music
he integrated into all of his stage plays. He also used his piano to offer some
clarifying musical demonstrations regarding Mozart’s “new” sound, relative to his
era.
26 Harold C. Schonberg, “The Villain of ‘Amadeus’ in Real Life,” New York Times,
I February 198 I, sec. 2, p. 1.
27 Peter Shaffer, “Paying Homage to Mozart,” New York Times Magazine, 2 September
1984, p. 22.
28 Ibid.
29 Kamm, p. 15?
30 Richard Sasanow, “Scoring with Mozart,” American Film (September 1983),
13?
31 In our talks in 1980 (Tapes [1980]), Shaffer specified what he thought there was
98 C. J. GIAN AKARIS
about Mozart’s compositions that alarmed Emperor Joseph II and “those sort of
people who shared the sort of common eighteenth-century language of very, very
simple harmony. Mozart was a threat to him – the sound he made – because I
think he thought it morbid like a lot of Viennese of his day. Because of all that
chromaticism – it worried him.” Along similar lines, see Will Crutchfield’s
“Did Music Hit Its Peak with Mozart?”, New York Times, 8 July 1984, sec. 2, pp.
I, 17.
32 Kamm, p. IS.
33 Ibid.
34 I am genuinely grateful to Shaffer for a copy of his screenplay for Amadeus
(unpublished). Incidentally, there are two or three significant changes made in
the movie that was shot compared to the film script.
35 Producer Saul Zaentz and the Saul Zaentz Company have produced a remarkable
two-record sound-track album of Amadeus (1984). Along with the music (in
excellent sound) performed by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martinin-the-Fields,
there are nearly three dozen colored shots from the film. The album
also includes highly informative comments about the story of the movie and each
piece of music it reproduces. The recording is from Fantasy, Inc., W AM – I 79 I .
36 Quoted by Sasanow, 13.
37 Shaffer, unpublished film script of Amadeus.
38 Ibid.
39 Shaffer, “Paying Homage,” p. 22.

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