On Sunday July 17, in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre Museum and as part of the third edition of the Cinéma Paradiso Louvre festival, Amadeus by Milos Forman will be screened, a film that won a procession of Oscars (ten nominations and eight statuettes won, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor). The perfect opportunity to see this masterpiece again, which must be seen on the big screen. Attracted by extraordinary personalities, whom he likes off-center, excessive but above all free, Milos Forman filmed the madness in Vol au above a cuckoo’s nest, the provocation in Larry Flynt, on the life of the sulphurous American editor and producer who gives his name to the film, or the excess in Man on the Moon, on the humorist Andy Kaufman, played by Jim Carey. In 1984, he tackled a monument: the most illustrious of composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Filmmaker of freedom, he also took it with the life of Mozart and drew the wrath of some purists. Because Amadeus is not a biopic, it’s a work of fiction, as extravagant as its main subject, and also a pretext to tell the ambivalence of the genius – very different from his talent – and the ambiguity of his human relationships. , here nourished by the hatred, contempt, admiration and envy that Mozart arouses in Salieri, his competitor at the court of Emperor Joseph II and whose point of view the film adopts in the form of confessions. The eccentricity of the genius composer is embodied by an illustrious unknown actor, guitarist (and not pianist) Tom Hulce, the ideal candidate to lend his features to the composer whose face the public did not identify. He will become a perfect Mozart, decadent, pooch and libertine, but will remain so for life. Only his French voice, that of Luq Hamet, will survive him. Thanks to Amadeus, the latter’s voice will later be that of Iznogoud, Roger Rabbit, Marty McFly, or Brandon Walsh in Beverly Hills 90210. Tom Hulce will be nominated for an Oscar in the Best Actor category for this performance, but it is F. Murray Abraham, the interpreter of Salieri, who will carry the statuette. The high-pitched, insane laughter of the latter, “who looked more like an animal than a human being” as described by an aristocrat of the time in her correspondence, runs throughout the film, and to hear it resonate in the heart of the Louvre should be an experience in itself. Milos Forman is a music-loving filmmaker and had already placed music at the center of his musical Hair and his feature film Ragtime. Among his rare screen appearances, we also note his small role in Les Bien-aimés, the musical film by Christophe Honoré. If we must rediscover this baroque whirlwind on a giant screen, it is of course for the splendor of sets, costumes and show but also, and above all, for the music, the third character in the film. Rarely, it was composed before filming and was performed live on set. The soundtrack, with its thirty tracks, has become the best-selling classic album in the history of recording. Mozart lived for music and Amadeus lives for Mozart’s music. Amadeus will be screened on Sunday at 10:45 p.m., after a concert by pianist Jean-Philippe Rio-Py who will introduce the screening.
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