Amadeus: Theatrical Cut (HD Reconstruction)

I've been looking for this forever. The Director's Cut stalls the film completely whenever these extra scenes appear, plus change Salieri's motivations as well as ruin the twist/revelation delivered about 2/3 through the film! Since I have no skills in video editing, I'm forever thankful that someone with a similar love for this movie the way it was released has taken the trouble to deliver what is the ONLY way this masterpiece should be watched; by removing 20 min of awfulness to provide us viewers with something Milos Foreman refuses to do. Bravo!

This just blew me away. And I'm not easily blown away, given that this is a movie I've seen at least 20 times. So why did this version make such an impact on me? Because the last ten or so times I've seen the film it's been in the "director's cut" format. I've always suspected that the DC was a massive dis-improvement on the theatrical cut (which I saw on its release in 1984 and many times before that version was withdrawn in 2002). The extra scenes in the DC seemed to add nothing, and often seemed actually to do damage. At best, the extra 20 minutes made a film that in its original form was long but didn't seem it (its 2hrs 40 flew by) suddenly feel every minute of its 3hrs. So I was already suspicious of the DC. But it's only now that I see the original again that I realise not just how much better it is than the DC, but what a masterpiece it is in its own right. I had begun to think of the film as merely "very good". It's not "very good". It is sublime. It really is a contender for the title of best movie ever made. Everything about it - the plot, the dialogue, the astonishing visuals and, of course, the music - is just off the scale. But it's only in this version that you can really appreciate that.

A flawless reconstruction. While watching I couldn't tell what was cut or added, or where. It's a testament the talent of TM2YC that, considering this was first released in 2017, the upscaling was unnoticeable. As a prior reviewer wrote the pace is a little faster, but it gives it a musical, buoyant rhythm. Highly recommended.

The Czech Black Wave's great gift to cinema was art-house trappings and themes mixed with baudy and dark humour, and Milos Forman, the movement's most famous member, has always been a crowd-pleaser who is willing to push boundaries. So when I finally got Amadeus on Blu-ray years ago, I was disappointed at what a slog it was, from the director of so many favourites of mine, including the brisk yet crushing "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." So I'm really pleased to finally experience the original, Oscar-winning cut of the movie that feels much more like a Forman movie, and speeds by at a raucous, bawdy and hilariously dark pace suitable for its subject. Unsurprisingly, TM2YC has handled the material beautifully and this edit deserves a place on any film lover's shelf, next to your Jiri Menzel or Dusan Makavejev collection.

One would have hoped that such a project was unnecessary but it's nonetheless a superb piece of work: conforming of the source material to the shorter version is seamless with no distractions that would drag somebody out of the narrative, it's a long film but doesn't feel it at all.