Vienna and his relationship with Salieri. Although the film portrays the two as virtually battling composers locked together in life and destiny, Mozart's letters recognize a rivalry but mention Salieri only a few times and then with dismissiveness. The greatest inaccuracy seems to be in the most compelling and important part of the film, in which Mozart dies from Salieri's hand after dictating his final work to his rival. In reality, it appears that this murder, in effect, is a storytelling fantasy for dramatic purposes. Mersmann notes that Salieri denied the charge on his deathbed (Mersmann 183). Davenport agrees that the murder was a vicious rumor which, unlike what we see in the film, Salieri vociferously denied: "No human hand had poisoned Wolfgang, but in his desperate hours [Mozart] wove the idea out of his harried brain." Salieri "was horrified when the ghoulish tale reached him." Davenport also notes that Salieri's bitter jealousy of Mozart softened as he aged and in the end he expressed admiration for his dead rival (Davenport 370-371).
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