Whither Amadeus? Hither Amadeus!

There have been rumors of a 4k Ultra HD release of Amadeus for several years now.  It's been said to be coming from Warner Bros and Criterion at different times.  I even fell for one of those shady Twitter accounts that announced it as if they had real insider information, before I found they were just posting best guesses are scoops for clicks.  I still feel a little bad for perpetuating it by posting the artwork they created on a forum and sharing a link to the fake news.  I guess you could say that this post is my penance for that.  What can I say?  I was naive!  But that naughty account has since vanished, and we're just left with the false hope.  As far as I know, there's no further reason to expect an Amadeus 4k outside of the "it's always possible" realm.  I mean, it is a high-profile Academy Award winning "Best Picture," and there have been rumors of a restoration possibly being "in the works."  But nothing's been legitimately announced.

Update and Error Correction 6/8/23 - 7/3/23: First of all, a huge thanks to Kevin and Chris in the comments for helping me set this screw-up straight.  Your instincts were completely correct!  To be clear, the 2009 DVD is the theatrical cut, not the director's cut (which is a good thing, because it means fans can still access the TC without tracking out the long OOP disc from the 90s).  And the good news for everyone is that, in the business of sorting my mistake out, I got my hands on a 1997 DVD, so we've wound up with more thorough coverage as a bonus.

Update 2/26/25: The rumors have finally proven true!  Or more accurately, perhaps, enough time has passed that the initially false rumors eventually stumbled into the facts bearing themselves out.  Whatever, same difference!  We now have Amadeus restored in 4k on UHD.  Just one cut, but what did you expect?  An edition with no compromises?

You might expect a three-hour drama about an 18th century composer to be a pretty dry, homework-like affair.  But oh no, 1984's Amadeus is a vibrant, exciting picture.  The conflict between F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce runs deep.  Think There Will Be Blood, but resonating on an even more profound level.  Milos Forman adapts the original stage play with a lavish production, clearly expenses were not spared.  Hulce gives a wild performance, but surrounded by first class players like Jeffrey Jones, Abraham and The Funhouse's Elizabeth Berridge, it all works magically.  In either cut.

Yes, I have to confess, I feel a little ambivalent on the director's cut issue.  I don't feel the longer cut hurts the pacing any - what's an extra twenty minutes when you're already pushing three hours?  You either have the attention span or you don't.  And some of the added material is pretty good, like the bit with the dogs.  It's all well done.  But I can't really disagree with critics who say it demonizes Salieri too much, with the nude scene and all making him excessively lecherous, which is kind of off-message with Mozart's genius meant to be his downfall.  And one or two scenes/ edits play a little better in the theatrical cut.  But really, the movie's strengths are still at play in either version.  Idealistically, I always think studios should err on the side of providing all the options, though, so any future release really ought to include both cuts, satisfying the filmmakers and their adherents and purists looking for the original theatrical experience.

But instead it continues to be a binary issue.  Warner Bros' original 1997 DVD, now long out of print and very hard to find, was an anamorphic, widescreen but barebones presentation of the theatrical cut as a 2-sided flipper disc (you have to take the disc out and turn it over to watch the second half of the film).  That was followed by the Two-Disc Special Edition in 2002, where they switched to the director's cut.  The two-disc version is a dual-layered disc, so the whole (longer) film plays without flipping or switching discs.  It's also a special edition, with an hour-long documentary on the second disc.  In 2003, there was a limited edition 3-disc set, but it's basically just the same 2-disc set in special packaging.  That third disc is a soundtrack CD.  Then, in 2009, they re-released the old flipper disc in an amary case - meaning back to the theatrical cut and no extras.  Also in 2009, however, WB released their blu-ray edition, which brought back the extras for their HD presentation.  There was a standard edition and a mediabook which also included that soundtrack CD.  But both are the director's cut only.  And finally, in 2025, the pendulum has swung all the way back to the other side.  Amadeus has been restored in 4k on a new UHD release from Warner Bros, but it's only the theatrical cut.

1) 1997 WB DVD; 2) 2002 WB DVD; 3) 2009 WB DVD;
4) 2009 WB BD; 5) 2025 WB UHD.

1) 2002 WB DVD; 2) 2009 WB BD.
(This shot doesn't appear on the '97 or '09 TC DVDs, nor the 2025 TC UHD.)

The original (and 2009 reissue, which is the same disc), is framed at 2.29:1, which is tweaked to 2.30:1 on the 2002 disc.  But if you look at what's actually in frame, the difference is far greater than a mere .01 in geometry.  It's zoomed in, effectively cutting off parts of the image along the sides and bottom.  Then the BD widens out it out further to 2.41:1.  It doesn't reveal more; the DVDs are just slightly vertically stretched, which the BD corrects.  The flipper DVDs are also, you won't help but notice, considerably more overcast with a warm hue, giving them a much yellower look in the shots above.  The 2002 DVD and BD are clearly using the same root master, with the same corrected colors, but the boost to HD on the blu makes a nice difference, giving a clearer cleaner image with distinctly sharper detail.  With less compression, the colors manage to appear more nuanced and naturalistic, too (look at the flesh tones in the second set of pics, for instance).  That said, even on the BD, grain is light; but this was shot on 70mm, so it should be substantially finer.

Now, the UHD is a smidgen taller again, measuring in at 2.39:1, which it achieves by revealing slivers more picture along the top and bottom.  The increased resolution is nice, too.  Look at the delightfully bored girl on the lower left corner of the first set of shots.  Even on the blu, her jewelry is largely reduced to pure white pixels, which are far more nuanced and polished in the UHD.  Her bow even suggests some subtle edge enhancement on the BD, which is replaced by pure naturalism on the UHD, where we can also see deeper hints at the pattern on the surrounding fabric.  Color-wise, besides finding more depths in the highlights like the aforementioned jewelry, the UHD returns to the warmer and yellower tone of the older DVDs.  But there it's more of a wash, whereas here, differing colors are still allowed to stand out, untarnished.  That is to say, for example, the rose in the second girl's hair is bright red when it had previously been faded, and the next girl's dress pure blue, where the yellow hue on the previous DVDs managed to make it lean greenish.  Those gold columns really shine like gold now, where they never did before.  And yet we can still see areas (i.e. the sheet music) of true white.

Audio-wise, they all give us a 5.1 mix with optional English subtitles, in TrueHD on the blu.  The 2002 DVD also had a stereo mix, though, which the blu-ray again drops.  But this is a music film that famously played in theaters with a six-track mix, so the 5.1 is the one we want.  The UHD gives it to us in DTS-HD, and the back of the case actually says 5.0, but when I examine the audio on my PC, it's still split into six channels.  Honestly, it doesn't sound hugely different from what's come before it.

As far as foreign language options, the DVDs also had a French 5.1 dub and French and Spanish subs.  The blu has a French, Spanish, German and Italian dub (all 5.1) and subtitles in fifteen additional languages.  The UHD goes back to just the French and Spanish dubs, and the back of the case suggests they're in DTS-HD, but upon inspection, they're actually lossy.  And they've cut down the massive list of subtitle options to just English, French and Spanish.

Now, the 2-disc DVD and the BD have the same extras, while the 1997 and 2009 DVDs have nothing but the trailer, plus a music-only track that actually isn't on the other discs.  The 2002 DVD and the BD have the trailer, but more importantly they have an audio commentary by Forman and writer Peter Shaffer.  It's a good discussion that answers a lot of questions and does a good job filling the entire running time.  Then there's an hour-long 'making of' documentary that talks to Forman, Shaffer, the producer, Hulce, Abraham, Berridge, Jones, Vincent Schiavelli, the music director, the AD, the production designer and choreographer.  It covers some identical ground as the commentary, but otherwise it's excellent and absolutely enough.  I'm not saying I wouldn't appreciate more good extras on another release, but honestly, we've got what we really need.

And the new UHD?  Well, if you didn't mind the loss of the director's cut (seriously, two discs with 1 cut on each disc doesn't sound that unreasonable), here's where you'll be disappointed.  That Forman/ Shaffer commentary was on the director's cut, and since that's gone, so is the commentary - what a loss!  The trailer's gone missing, too.  They couldn't at least have stuck the old 2009 disc in the package as a supplement?  Maybe they're intentionally holding back for a 50th anniversary release?  At least the documentary is still here, and we do get something new: a 23 minute retrospective, where most of the stars and crew from the documentary return to reminisce about the film via webcam.  It's a step down from the first one, and often redundant, but it's fun, and nice we got something fresh.  Oh, and the new release also comes in a slipcover.

So, bottom line?  A big "yes!" to this new disc, but with a strong emphasis on the caveat to hang onto your BDs, which I'd originally described as a "decent placeholder for now."  It turns out it's going to hold onto it's relevancy in our collections for a long time to come.  But never the less, the next time you watch Amadeus, it should be on this new 4k.