I do not remember every single detail of Amadeus, but if there is one thing permanently burned into my brain, it is that laugh.

That absurd, high-pitched, almost ridiculous laugh coming from one of the greatest musical geniuses in history.

And somehow it fits him perfectly.

What stayed with me even more than Mozart himself, though, is Salieri. I think the movie is really his tragedy. Not because he has no talent, but because he is talented enough to understand just how much better Mozart is.

That is a much more painful situation.

The whole movie begins with an old Salieri screaming:

“Mozart! Mozart, forgive your assassin! I confess, I killed you…”

Which is already a fairly dramatic way to begin a story.

But there is one scene that probably explains their entire relationship better than anything else.

Salieri writes a little march to welcome Mozart at the Emperor’s court. He is obviously proud of it. Mozart hears it once, sits down at the piano, and plays it back from memory.

Then he starts changing it.

Not in some cruel, calculated way either. That would almost be easier for Salieri. Mozart is just happily playing around with the melody, fixing things as they come to him, completely unaware that he is destroying this man’s self-esteem in real time.

He even tells the Emperor that the music is already in his head after hearing it once.

And the little march gradually turns into something much more recognisable: the melody associated with “Non più andrai” from The Marriage of Figaro. The script makes this transformation explicit, which makes the whole scene even better.

I think that is what makes Salieri such an interesting character for me. He does not hate Mozart because he thinks Mozart is a fraud.

Quite the opposite.

He hates him because he knows exactly how good he is.

And probably the worst part is that Mozart himself is barely even trying to humiliate him.

It is not really about one composer being jealous of another.

It is a man looking at someone else and becoming convinced that God gave the gift he had prayed for his entire life to the most annoying person imaginable.