Bipolar Amadeus/St. Joan: Chapter 5 Part 4 of
THE BIG PICTURE: A POST-JUNGIAN MAP OF GLOBAL CINEMA
by James Whitlark, Ph.D.
AMADEUS (1984)/ST. JOAN (1957)
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I have never actually been able to buy anything of official religion . . . [yet] to me a life without a sense of the divine is perfectly meaningless. —Peter Shaffer |
The impression made …[remarking this archetype] may be likened
to the uncanny feeling which would steal over us if, amid the noise and bustle of
a modern city street, we were suddenly to come upon an ancient relic … (GW
vol. 5, par 1)
As Jung himself admitted, Oedipal dynamics are particularly Freudian, wrapped in
repression and disguise, because regression to stage-three (egotism) makes one have
difficulty facing unflattering truths about oneself, yet in our culture being subject
to egotism is itself one such dishonor.
Details of the “family romance” differ from culture to culture
more than Freud recognized (Whitlark 1991, 251 n. 49); nonetheless, standard Freudian
criticism of film is sometimes justified in discovering shadows of Sophocles on modern
celluloid. Limitations of that school, however, include the following: First, it
requires therapy to be conscious. Consequently, a Freudian version of the audience
may be attracted by hidden psychological content but not helped by it. In contrast
from a post-Jungian perspective, if a film suggests reinterpreting memories from
an adult perspective, this process of changing immature attitudes may occur unconsciously.
Only if a film lacks such a suggestion does the audience have to supply it themselves—and
they must add it in an altered state, not in the relatively conscious one psychotherapy
prefers. Second, Freud did not pay much attention to development after puberty, whereas
the Graves/Jung sequence may continue into old age. Finally, this Post-Jungian approach
realizes that temporary regression may resemble mental illness but be necessary to
finish incomplete lessons (such as an improperly resolved Oedipal Complex).
As an example of a multiform, cinematic version of the Oedipal Complex, consider Amadeus (1984). Both the title character, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the protagonist, Salieri, suffer from an obvious Oedipal relationship with their own fathers and, in a displaced form, with each other. Furthermore, while composing the work, its playwright and scriptwriter, Peter Shafer, may himself have felt Anxiety of Influence (the literary version of the Oedipal Complex), because he has not subsequently mentioned any debt to what looks like a primary source: George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan.
My reason for examining Amadeus here is that, among much else they have in common, the two plays/films share the (stage-seven) theme of this chapter: apparent mental illness (including regression into the Oedipal) can be utilized as a positive force in mankind’s evolution. From the time Shaffer's original play appeared, some critics, unfortunately, have come with lower stages in mind, thereby resenting Shaffer’s unflattering portrayal of Mozart. The problem arises from the intellectually demanding dynamism that Shaffer and Forman inherited from George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan and Graham Greene’s adaptation of it, not the largely irrelevant question of whether the Mozart of the drama is historically accurate. Since in Shakespeare's Richard III the title character is cast as a villain, only a few scholars object to his being caricatured in ways history will not even begin to support. In contrast, the crudities of Amadeus’s title character come almost verbatim from the real Mozart's letters. Nonetheless, they have disturbed many because the play and movie superficially resemble a melodrama: the mad villain Salieri versus the innocent hero Mozart. A viewer who erroneously sees the work thus may resent the supposed hero's vulgarity.
Fearing a comparable confusion, Shaw wrote a seventy-nine-page preface to St. Joan. It explains that he does not use villains. Instead of a superficial dichotomy of good and evil, he constructs a dialectic of historical forces: conservatives championing inertia versus progressives attuned to the need for change. Each side has both virtues and unlikable qualities. Joan, for instance, was the kind of person always envied and hated—termed by Shaw ”the Word made Flesh” (Shaw 1924, lvi)—cf. Mozart's being called a divine “incarnation” or “the Voice of God” by Salieri. In Shaw's version, she is a genius, resembling “Blake” (Shaw 1924 xviii). Shaw tends to relate artistic and religious brilliance—an important fact since one might not otherwise see St. Joan and Mozart as comparable characters.
Joan says that it is through the imagination that “the messages
of God come to us” (as inspiration comes to a genius). Both the characters Joan and
Mozart have enemies primarily because of their brilliance, but secondarily from their
lack of social graces. Shaw attributes her boorishness primarily to her youth (Shaw
1924, viii et passim). Shaffer emphasizes Mozart's immaturity, particularly his “unforgettable
giggle—piercing and infantile” (Shaffer 495). Both characters transgress gender stereotypes:
she with male attire and demeanor, he with that high-pitched laugh and his foppishness.
Audiences will have difficulty identifying with them, but their antagonists are more
amiable. The inquisitor Cauchon, Shaw continues, was no villain, but a fair, even
kindly judge, reasonably condemning her in order to defend society from disruption
(Shaw 1924, xlii-xliii). Salieri also claims to speak for the average man, the mediocrity.
A motif throughout Amadeus is the objection that the length of Mozart's operas
makes unreasonable demands on audiences (who might also find the play and movie long).
Shaw spends the last pages of his preface defending the length of his drama from
the same kind of people who like art neat and short Shaw 1924, lxxxii-lxxxiii).
“Too Many Notes”
Listeners who cannot enjoy the physical and intellectual demands of the works have
not even reached the level of Salieri: he sat enraptured while the insipid emperor
fidgeted and yawned. Indeed, despite Salieri's humbly calling himself a “mediocrity,”
neither he nor Cauchon is an average man. Both achieved eminence, the former as high
official, the latter as the most celebrated composer of his day. The average musician
is unemployed. Of the millions of working professionals, relatively few compose anything
that survives. Centuries after his death, Salieri's music continues to be played
and recorded—occasionally.
What distinguishes Salieri-like talent from Mozart-like genius? In general the question remains unanswerable, but in terms of St. Joan and Amadeus, the difference is largely between depression and mania. Shaw insisted that Joan was not totally psychotic, but certainly not normal. Her condition would now be called “manic.” In particular, her energy, her sense of invulnerability, and unassailable self-confidence demand such a classification. An ordinary peasant girl might be unsophisticated enough to call the king “Charlie”—once, not repeatedly as Joan does. The average maiden would quickly notice the bad impression she was making. Joan offensively patronizes him for scene after scene. An ordinary peasant girl might dream about having adventures in male attire, but normal caution would prevent her following them. Not so with Joan. More than merely young, she is perpetually immature, or, in the theological phrase that Shaw prefers to use, “in a state of invincible ignorance” (Shaw 1924, xlvii). When, however, the mania grows milder, it bestows the swiftness of mind to outthink those her gaucheries have offended.
Particularly in the movie, where the frenetic camera matches his
own exuberance, Mozart exhibits mania. Filled with energy characteristic of that
condition, he works all day and parties most of the night while his ordinary wife
must nap. A common manic symptom, his extravagance ruins him more surely than does
Salieri. Typical of manics' undertaking vast, improbable projects, he writes a five-hour
opera based on a story that the emperor, his patron, has already condemned. Not merely
the unusual circumstances of being a child prodigy but likewise his manic self-absorption
keep him from outgrowing his effeminate giggle and foppishness. Would he not seek
to correct them if he really bothered to notice how others regard him? Instead, he
insults the powerful while remaining oblivious to his folly. On the positive side,
in mild mania, he composes with incredible speed, confidently recording without a
single emendation.
Spiritual Variations
For Shaw, the mania of the “unaveraged individual” incarnates his God, the Bergsonian
élan vital, an evolutionary force. Eccentrics make change and therefore
progress possible. Joan, according to Shaw, is an unconscious Protestant, moving
religion in a direction that he (at least raised a Protestant) judges to be an advance.
For Shaffer, “a life without a sense of the divine would be perfectly
meaningless” (Gianakaris 46). What for Mozart? In the play, he occasionally voices
heterodox religious sentiments as in his speaking in support of the Masons (suspected
of being an anti–Catholic heresy) or his describing his music as “turn[ing] the audience
into God” (2, 4). In the movie, however, he has become inscrutable, a projection
of Salieri’s mind. In dictating the Dies Irae section of his mass, Mozart
pauses to ask if Salieri believes in Hell. Salieri does. Without expressing any opinion
of his own, Mozart continues dictating.
So Who is Salieri?
Far from being a Mozart-like prodigy with a childhood spent before the crown heads
of Europe, Shaffer had his first success (Five Finger Exercise) when he was
32. Like his Salieri, he had spent many years watching younger men than he achieve
prominence. Also like Salieri, once his career began it flourished, but not without
detraction such as Robert Brustein’s review of Amadeus, which treats it as
the work of a facile mediocrity (Brustein 23-24).
Shaffer introduces his collected plays with an autobiographical “Preface”: “I was quite old, as these things go, to be making my debut, but I had spent my earlier life being cowed, and this accounted for my tardy appearance as a dramatist. . . . I do not blame my parents for this pathetic puritanism; far too much craven behavior is blamed by children on their parents. The truth is that I have always experienced difficulties in following the immediate promptings of my spirit. I regret this deeply, although I have some cause to be thankful for it as well. Repression, properly used, can be a beneficial source” (Shaffer viii). So Shaffer introduces himself as successfully Oedipal, accepting their order and not even resenting this subjection.
Less gracious or more frank, Salieri does blame his father for not advancing his career, and rejoices at the latter's death, considering it the work of God. From his bourgeois father, nonetheless, he derives his notion of the divine: the “God of Bargains.” The latter will give him success at the price of industry, chastity, and humility. Repression! Since these indeed qualify one to be an admirable servant, understandably, he rises in the Austrian musical bureaucracy.
Also understandably, his happiness is precarious, particularly in the movie, where he seems devoid of a personal life. His success must constantly compensate for those pleasures he denies himself. Momentarily self-satisfied, he bows to the crucifix, thanking it for the music he has composed. When, however, Mozart makes that music seem inadequate, he burns the crucifix and declares war on his Heavenly Father. Only that war—that sense of the divine through opposition to it—compensates for his lacking the unreflective mania of Mozart. It is also, of course, a war on Mozart, who seeks his patronage—his fatherhood—but without paying filial respect. After the latter’s death, the excitement of psychological struggle ends. Salieri has been driven mad in one way—depressive—by a desire to be mad in another—manic.
His suicidal mood may deceive an inattentive audience into thinking him merely a crazed villain. His actual condition appears more clearly in comparison with another scene from St. Joan. Although, in a sense, Salieri combines characteristics of all those who oppose Joan, one especially stands as model for Salieri’s depression. A chaplain, who has spent much of the play screaming for Joan's blood, rushes after her death “like a demented creature” to Warwick, who ordered her burned. Now the chaplain, frenetic with guilt, blubbers for a while, then runs away, crying: “I am no better than Judas; I will hang myself” (Shaw 1924, 138). In contrast, Warwick remains inhumanly cold even though he, not the Chaplain, is responsible for the death.
The Salieri of the movie is most like the Chaplain, human in misery,
reproaching himself for a murder he worked to achieve, but did not really commit.
Also, in the London version of the play, as Shaffer himself finally realized: “Salieri
had too little to do with Mozart's ruin. In the second act he was too often reduced
to prowling hungrily around the outside of the composer's apartment, watching his
decline without sufficiently contributing to it” (Shaffer xvii). Only after reading
Michael Billington's condemnation of the second act for giving more theological allegory
than action did Shaffer slightly amend it (Bilington 11). Thus, his original interest
was more in that psychology and metaphysics than in Salieri's machinations; and in
redoing the play for the screen, scheming again took second place to spiritual development.
Beginning and End
Shaw tried to translate St. Joan to the screen, but as it approached production,
Catholic organizations objected to his theology (under the usual guise that it was
somehow unhistorical). Shaw stubbornly brought historical documents to his defense.
Production stopped. No movie came from the play until seven years after his death.
Then the Catholic author Graham Greene produced a religiously orthodox (and generally
lackluster) script (Shaw 1980, 55).
One of its innovations, though, deserves note: Shaw's epilogue became a frame story. After an establishing shot of Chinon castle, the king, now aged, converses, recalling Joan. This sets the action within dream and flashback (thereby enhancing the hypnotic qualities). Similarly, after a short establishing sequence, Salieri, now aged, converses, recalling Mozart in flashbacks. Thus it is through an aged, repressed, and repressive individual (king or Salieri) that the audience perceives the young manic.
The frame of the filmed Amadeus occurs in a madhouse. It echoes another of the theatrical influences on Shaffer, “The Theatre of Cruelty,” particularly Marat/Sade. Antonin Artaud, founder of that “Theatre of Cruelty,” borrowed significantly from movies on Balinese autohypnosis made by Margaret Mead, Jane Belo, and Gregory Bateson at least partly for Milton Erickson: “The Balinese productions take shape at the very heart of matter, life, reality. There is in them something of the ceremonial quality of a religious rite, in the sense that they extirpate from the mind of the onlooker all idea of pretense, cheap imitations of reality. . . . The thoughts it aims at, the spiritual states it seeks to create, the mystic solutions it proposes are attained without delay or circumlocution. All of which seems to be an exorcism to make our demons FLOW.” In the preface to his collected plays, Shaffer, near where he mentions Shaw (though not St. Joan), also alludes to “The Theatre of Cruelty,” to which he has a smaller debt (Shaffer vii, x). Explaining it, Gene Plunka likens Shaffer's “musiclike, continuous movement” of episodes to Artaud's ritualistic theatrics (Plunka 195-96, et passim).
Edward Risden adds: “Such drama uses shock value to precipitate social and psychological perceptions, but such perceptions carry the potential for an even deeper awakening, that of the spiritual faculty, in those patrons sufficiently hardy of heart and strong of stomach” (Risden 77). At Forman’s insistence, the movie never abandons verisimilitude, but its conspicuous use of montage set to music achieves an anti–realistic effect, a snowballing of powerful images. An audience may feel as stunned as the priest who sits, without a word of religious reproof or consolation, listening throughout to Salieri’s long attack on God, the Father, which the complexity and artistry of the film raises above its stage-three, Oedipal origins. In particular, Shaffer’s Shavian dialectic contains a suggestion unknown to the characters: self-improvement. Saved from having to revise music because of his brilliance, Mozart also seems unwilling to alter his much less perfect life. Similarly, Salieri confesses without repentance. From a Freudian perspective, this refusal to accept repression is unmitigated tragedy. Ironically, in the postmodern age of Deleuze’s and Guattiari’s Anti-Oedipus, such refusal has become a symbol of not becoming frozen, because rising high above stage four requires going back and re-imagining the Oedipal period, stripping it of fear-invoked, unthinking repression and obedience.
Continue to THE BIG PICTURE Chapter 6 Part 5
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