Warner Home Video has released Amadeus on 4K Ultra HD.

Nominated for 11 Oscars and winner of 8, Amadeus was based on Peter Shaffer’s acclaimed play originally performed in London with Paul Scofield as Antonio Salieri, the 18th Century court composer of Emperor Joseph II and Simon Callow as his rival, boy musical genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Tony award-winning play starred Ian McKellen and Tim Curry. Shaffer, who previously won a Tony award for Equus won his second for Best Play. He was the twin brother of Anthony Shaffer, the Tony award-winning author of Sleuth.

Milos Forman, the Oscar-winning director of One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, had to be dragged kicking and screaming to see the play while in London to promote his 1979 film version of Hair but emerged loving it and determined to make a film of it. The Czech born director was then living in Connecticut and British born Shaffer was then living in New York so the two collaborated for months on adapting the play for the screen in the director’s home.

Forman cast stage actors F. Murray Abraham as Salieri and Tom Hulce as Mozart. Forman had seen Abraham in Broadway’s The Ritz and Hulce, who had understudied Peter Firth on Broadway in Equus, came highly recommended by Shaffer.

Both actors were nominated for Oscars for their extraordinary performances with Abraham winning. Neither actor was ever nominated for an Oscar again, but Hulce came close with his 1988 portrayal of the dim-witted garbageman who puts smarter brother Ray Liotta through medical school in Dominic and Eugene. There is a third star of the film and that is the music of Mozart which dominates the film from beginning to end.

Forman, who would win a second Best Director Oscar for the film, returned to his native Prague in the still Communist Czechoslovakia to make it because Prague still looked like it did in the 18th Century, an easy stand-in for Vienna. The natural beauty of the city and its magnificent churches and halls are perfectly captured in the film. The film’s production design by Arizona born Patricia von Brandenstein and Forman’s former collaborator Karel Cerny is also a standout.

The film looks better than new on 4K UHD. Extras include the 2004 DVD documentary with Forman and Shaffer on the making of the film and a brand-new documentary on the making of what is now considered a masterpiece. It includes on-screen interviews with Abraham, Hulce, von Brandenstein, and others.

1984 was a year of many fine films. The Best Picture race was a close one between Amadeus and David Lean’s final masterpiece, A Passage to India for which Peggy Ashcroft won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar as an elderly Englishwoman who is the heart and soul of the film. The other nominees included Places in the Heart for which Sally Field won a second Best Actress Oscar as a determined woman farmer and The Killing Fields for which Haing S. Ngor won the Best Supporting Actor award for his portrayal of a real-life survivor of the Khmer Rouge’s purge of Cambodia.

The fifth nominee was A Soldier’s Story, the film version of A Soldier’s Play, for which Adolph Caesar received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his portrayal of a tough sergeant in the tension filled film in which an African-American officer leads the investigation of a murder in a racially charged situation in World War II.

Other 1984 films of note include Starman for which Jeff Bridges received a Best Actor nomination for his sympathetic portrayal of an alien falling in love with the widow of a man whose body he inhabits, and Under the Volcano for which Albert Finney received a Best Actor nomination for his intense portrayal of the alcoholic British consul in John Huston’s film of Malcolm Lowry’s novel.

The fifth Best Actor nomination went to Sam Waterston as the journalist in The Killing Fields who does his best to try to get his interpreter (Ngor) out of Cambodia. As good as he is, though, there were two actors who were better that year – Victor Banerjee as the falsely accused doctor in A Passage to India and Jack Lemmon as the Connecticut priest shielding a rebellious seminary student from his conservative monsignor in Mass Appeal. It was Lemmon’s best 1980s performance and certainly more deserving of an Oscar nomination than Tribute for which he was nominated four years earlier.

Sally Field wasn’t the only actress nominated for playing a courageous farm woman that year. Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek were also nominated for similar roles, Lange in Country and Spacek in The River. Also nominated were Judy Davis as the confused troublemaker in A Passage to India and Vanessa Redgrave as the 19th Century feminist in The Bostonians. Most conspicuous by her omission was Diane Keaton as the warden’s wife who has an affair with one of her husband’s prisoners in Mrs. Soffel.

Ngor’s competition for Best Supporting Actor in addition to Caesar, were John Malkovich as Field’s blind tenant in Places in the Heart, Pat Morita as the karate teacher in The Karate Kid, and Ralph Richardson nominated posthumously as the sixth Earl of Greystoke in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Those who were overlooked include James Fox as Banerjee’s friend in A Passage to India, Danny Glover as a repentant thief in Places in the Heart, and Zeljko Ivanek as the seminarian in Mass Appeal.

Only Ashcroft, among the acting winners, was a guaranteed winner in the weakly competitive Best Supporting Actress category. Her competition, such as it was, included Glenn Close as the object of Robert Redford’s affections in The Natural, Lindsay Crouse as Field’s sister in Places in the Heart, Christine Lahti as Goldie Hawn’s friend in Swing Shift, and Geraldine Page in a minor role as a grieving mother in The Pope of Greenwich Village.

All the films mentioned here are available on home video but not on streaming at the moment.

Happy Viewing.