As much as I respect Milos Forman‘s Amadeus (’84), I haven’t had the slightest desire to rewatch it over the last 39 years. This is due to my profound, never-forgotten loathing for Tom Hulce‘s performance as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Not to mention that awful white lion’s-mane wig that he wore. Perhaps others feel this way also.

But if I could somehow re-experience my viewing of the B’way stage version with Ian McKellen and Peter Firth, I would do so repeatedly.

From “Respect for Milos Forman,” posted on 4.4.18: “Sometime in ’81 I saw Peter Shaffer‘s Amadeus at the Broadhurst, and revelled in Ian McKellen and Peter Firth‘s performance as Salieri and Mozart. It was such a huge, radiant high that I had difficulty adjusting to Milos Forman’s film version, which opened in September ’84.

“It was a handsome, well-crafted thing and a Best Picture Oscar champ, of course, and like everyone else I…well, appreciated F. Murray Abraham‘s Salieri. But Forman’s film just didn’t have that same snap and pizazz, and I hated Thomas Hulce‘s giggly-geek performance as Mozart and flat-out despised Elizabeth Berridge‘s bridge-and-tunnel performance as Constanze Mozart (i.e., she called her husband “Wolfie”).

“Amadeus is a good film but the play was much better.”