Amadeus - 4K Blu-ray Review

Movie
While I love director’s cuts and unrated cuts being included in home media releases (especially if they’re superior and not simply a cash grab), I really don’t like when we don’t get the option for the theatrical cut included in the release, especially when it’s an 8-time Academy Award-winning best picture and has F. Murray Abraham’s role of a lifetime. Couple that with the fact that the director’s cut of Amadeus drastically slows down the pacing, with acting that isn’t nearly as seamless as the rest of the film, all of which made Warner’s decision to ONLY release the director’s cut on home video since 2002 all the more frustrating. Now we have a brand new restoration done in 2024 (an actual restoration, not just a rescan) that has given birth to this week’s 4K UHD release of the theatrical cut for the very first time in 23 years (domestically).

Based upon the 1979 Broadway play by Peter Schaffer), Amadeus tells us the tale of a young musical prodigy named Mozart (Tom Hulce) told through the lens of bitter rival Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham, in a role of a lifetime). Old, beaten down, and at the end of his life, Salieri confesses his past sins and failures to a local priest after being committed to an asylum after a suicide attempt. There he unfurls the tale of the young prodigy Mozart, and his eventual murder of the same man some years later. Told through a series of flashbacks and stories, Salieri tells a tale of typical envy and avarice, as he (Salieri) watches the much more talented Mozart rise up the ranks of Europe, and soon encroach on his role as composer to the King (now disgraced actor Jeffrey Jones)

Amadeus is a loose biopic at best, and really more of a “based on a true story...wink...nod” than anything. Still, it manages to have kept its luster after 41 years, acting as one of the premier takes on Mozart’s life to date. Schaffer’s screenplay is a wonderful story of rage, jealousy, envy, and the absolute destruction of one's own life when falling to it. Salieri embodies the very soul of a man who is immensely talented himself but sees his own works as utter garbage in comparison to a rival. OCD run amok allows the composer to fall deeper and deeper into fits of jealous rage, with every “win” by Mozard simply adding fuel to the fire of insecurities and self-doubt. It’s fascinating to watch because it’s so incredibly relatable. We’ve all known that person who is so obsessed with winning that they lose track of their conquests. The “Idea” of winning has become so firmly rooted in their minds that they lose sight of the forest for the trees. In this case, Salieri feels that everything he has ever done is garbage and that God himself is actually mocking him through Mozart himself.

At the same time, Mozart’s over-the-top and foppish demeanor has to be tempered in our own eyes, as we have to remember that this entire tale is being told from the unreliable narrator standpoint of Salieri, who is himself IN A FREAKING INSANE ASYLUM! Since Salieri finds him repulsive and comical in his mind, Mozart is shown as a doofish oaf on screen. And when his insecurities get the better of him, Mozart rises almost to godhood in the representation. Watching this without taking that into account would most certainly make the viewer view Mozart as some mustache-twirling villain, rising in heights until his inevitable end comes crashing down due to a lifetime of self-destructive behaviors. That being said, watching this all KNOWING that every detail is unreliable at best coming from Salieri, the entire film takes on a very introspective nature that begs the viewer to “read between the lines”. Controversial or not, Mozart had some very tragic moments in his life, but as seen through the worn-out eyes of Salieri, this film does an amazing job of showing what a pitiful creature he is, and what a sad fate he brought on himself.




Rated PG by the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

The title card of the film lets us know that Amadeus was completely restored back in 2024, and the results really show the work involved. Shot in Prague and lavishly designed, the film is one of the most sumptuous period pieces of the 1980s. It features amazing costuming, lush background shots, and even better textures thanks to the 35mm film source used for the production. The new 4K UHD absolutely blows the aging Blu-ray out of the water, with a much better encoding than the VC-1 encoded Blu-ray that was done to accommodate HD-DVD’s lesser double-layer capabilities. What makes the restoration and remaster so incredible is that they had to work tirelessly to assemble the original master from the OCN. The original negative was altered and spliced to create the director’s cut of the film. This means they had to go back and piece it back together and re-color time the entire thing to be as close to the theatrical experience as possible.

With all the technical restoration stuff aside, the disc looks fantastic. The film has always had a slightly soft and creamy look thanks to how it was filmed, but it is not artificially soft, nor does it look unnatural in any way. I’m not as familiar with the theatrical cut as I SHOULD be, but judging by interviews and discussions online, I’m going to put forth that this new restoration looks as close to the theatrical release in theaters as we’ve ever seen. There’s almost no artifacting whatsoever, and the blacks are just deep and inky thanks to the HDR application. I wanted to give the film a 5/5 rating, but there’s just enough softness that I wanted to give it a 4.75/5. Sadly 4.5 is as close as I could get, but keep in mind my intended 4.75/5.







Audio:

I don’t have access to my Blu-ray of the film right now (it’s packed up in a box in my other house) but if I remember correctly the film came with 5.1 Dolby TrueHD track. Now, my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I SWORE it was a slightly tweaked version of the original theatrical mix, but had been amped up for home video in some way (going off of memory here). This new track is a 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix, and I’m not sure whether Warner simply repackaged it with a different compression codec, or if this is a new mix. From what I was able to glean from several interviews, the 5.1 DTS-HD MA track is simply the film’s 5.0 mix put into a 5.1 wrapper and should be as theatrically perfect as possible.

The track is a lively affair, with rich surround usage and amazing scoring that just flows effortlessly from channel to channel. As you could guess from being a 5.0 mix put into a 5.1 wrapper, the LFE channel doesn’t get a massive amount of activity. There’s some solid low end with the organ music and a few door crashes, but overall the low end is a soft and accentuating bit of work rather than a bassy affair. Crisp and clear vocals are locked up at the center of the room, and the mains do well with various panning effects in the King’s court, as well as the musical number.





Extras:

• The Making of Amadeus - Featurette
•AMADEUS The Making of a Masterpiece -Featurette







Amadeus's theatrical cut has been a long time coming, and for one of the most sumptuous period pieces of the 1980s, it’s a treat on 4K UHD. The image is a massive upgrade over the aging Director’s cut Blu-ray, and it looks as filmic as you could possibly want. The audio is fantastic (although a recycled 5.1 DTS-HD MA track vs. a new Atmos mix), but the extras are incredibly anemic. Being that this is theatrical and not the Director’s cut of the Blu-ray, I would still keep the old Blu-ray around for said Director’s cut AND the extras that it has on board. Still, a fantastic watch and a great great-looking 4K upgrade.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Roy Dotrice, Simon Callow, Christine Ebersole
Directed by: Milos Forman
Written by: Peter Schaffer, Zdenek Mahler
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 HEVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (Latin), German, Italian DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Korean, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Swedish
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: PG
Runtime: 160 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: February 25th, 2025

I think the soundtrack by Falco is incredible.

EDIT: I'm being told that this is not the music video for Rock Me Amadeus. Disregard.

Thanks for the review. Sadly I never got around to see this. Growing up it was on cable many times. I may check it out one day.

Travis Ballstadt said:

I think the soundtrack by Falco is incredible.

EDIT: I'm being told that this is not the music video for Rock Me Amadeus. Disregard.

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Is this what you're looking for?

Epoxy1 said:

Is this what you're looking for?

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I’ve got it on vinyl.

Travis Ballstadt said:

I’ve got it on vinyl.

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Funny story....when I was in high school and this song came out I worked at a pizza restaurant that had a juke box. The night manager was kind of a male body part (if you know what I mean) and he mentioned in a casual conversation about how much he hated this song. So a group of us employees took up a collection and loaded up the juke box with some coins and picked this song to play over and over and over again (25 or more times)...let's just say his reaction to the song on repeat was something out of a SNL skit. He completely lost it and went mental and started throwing things back in the kitchen. ROFL

Travis Ballstadt said:

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That is awesome...thanks for sharing. I guess great minds think alike...it was 1986 or 1987 when we did this at the Round Table Pizza in San Carlos, CA.

Love this movie, one of my favorites, so glad to have the theatrical cut in UHD, I wish they would also have updated the director's cut to UHD.

Here's a interesting article about the Director's cut but it goes into the audio side https://www.mixonline.com/sfp/amadeus-directors-cut-369043
Quote from the article:

"“We mostly worked from the 70mm sounding master, from the stems,” says Berger, who had also revisited the film’s audio tracks a number of years ago for a Laserdisc version. “There was a dialog stem and there were music units that were transferred into Bob Randles’ computer, and there was an effects stem: two 6-track [mag] stems that had the dialog, music and effects on them. But that’s as far back as we went. The music was from the stereo mixdown from 24-track. I think for a couple of cues where there was some wow and flutter, they did go back to the 24-track."

VJM said:

Love this movie, one of my favorites, so glad to have the theatrical cut in UHD, I wish they would also have updated the director's cut to UHD.

Here's a interesting article about the Director's cut but it goes into the audio side https://www.mixonline.com/sfp/amadeus-directors-cut-369043
Quote from the article:

"“We mostly worked from the 70mm sounding master, from the stems,” says Berger, who had also revisited the film’s audio tracks a number of years ago for a Laserdisc version. “There was a dialog stem and there were music units that were transferred into Bob Randles’ computer, and there was an effects stem: two 6-track [mag] stems that had the dialog, music and effects on them. But that’s as far back as we went. The music was from the stereo mixdown from 24-track. I think for a couple of cues where there was some wow and flutter, they did go back to the 24-track."

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yeah, I was kind of sad not to see the Director's cut on a second disc, but having the theatrical cut is a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE thing as they have ignored that cut for 23 years almost.