Introduction/Paul Zaentz
Paul Zaentz, Saul Zaentz's nephew, is a film producer

Peter Shaffer rewrote history in his “black opera” Amadeus, then rewrote the play for Forman's color extravaganza. It takes the form of a confession, thirty-two years after Mozart's death, by his supposed murderer, Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), a mediocre composer who alone perceived the sublime genius of Mozart's music. Seen through Salieri's eyes, Tom Hulce's Mozart never veers from a cartoon portrayal of the “obscene child”; he is indeed an unlikely if not unworthy vessel of divine inspiration, yet paradoxically, one whose talent could only be explained by divine intervention. Forman returned to his native Czechoslovakia to film Amadeus amid the still glorious eighteenth-century architecture of Prague.