SILVER

Plagued by jealousy of — and admiration for — his rival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce), the mediocre court composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham, in an Oscar®-winning performance) narrates his encounters with the childish but sublimely gifted prodigy. This visually lavish period piece — which mixes fact and fiction, high art and vulgarity, meticulous detail and jarring anachronism — tears through the stuffy conventions of the genre with a swell of operatic emotions. Filmed in Prague, the production was director Miloš Forman's first return to his homeland since fleeing to the West a decade earlier. The film won eight Oscars®, including Best Picture and Best Director for Forman. DIR Miloš Forman; SCR Peter Shaffer, from his play; PROD Saul Zaentz. U.S./France, 1984, color, 160 min. RATED PG