The Best Picture winner based on Peter Shaffer’s stage play about Mozart and Salieri is Amadeus.
Released in 1984, Amadeus was directed by Miloš Forman and adapted by Shaffer from his own successful 1979 play. The story imagines a rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri in 18th-century Vienna, largely through Salieri’s perspective. Its title refers to Mozart’s middle name, meaning “beloved of God.”
The film is inspired by historical figures but is not a literal biography. Mozart and Salieri did know each other, yet the movie’s depiction of Salieri as a jealous conspirator—and the suggestion that he caused Mozart’s death—is primarily dramatic invention. Shaffer described the work as a fantasia based on a real-life theme.
Amadeus won eight of its eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for F. Murray Abraham, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It is sometimes confused with a Mozart biopic, but its central subject is the imagined psychological conflict between genius and mediocrity.