Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 38

1 1 Thursday, Dec. I9 1974 Phlla. Dally News 39 ill? 'UMher us A Bed Moviegoers Qui Muse Parental Guide Martial audit and lama acca- Graphic sional rttu lanauaaa dob im in "Tha Cadfalhar Part Two." Na MX day. havwvtr. saga were told in the first film.

What we have here is simply hindsight and an afterthought, both seLf-induIgently stretched out and brainlessly tangled. Anyone who missed the first film (and failed to read the book) will be at a total loss here, what with two stories being told at the same time and no substantial difference in filming style to tell them apart. For example, near the end, the Sonnv character (James Caan) murdered in the first film reappears without re-introductirn or explanation and immediately behaves like an old friend. Technically the film can't be faulted. Ci-nematographer Gordon Willis turns in work that proves he's simply the finest around, and the production design and music are detailed, moody and splendid.

THE PERFORMANCES however, are near invisible and uninteresting. Pacino is downright catatonic; DeNiro, unmemorablc; and Robert Duvall (again playing lawyer Tom Hagen), visibly bored. Female lead Diane Keaton, as Padno's wife, is an oddity. She simply has no control over (or ability for) high dramatis, and comes across funnier here than ihe's ever been in her Woody Allen larks. The film's boredom ceases whenever Miss Keaton is on screen; she supplies the film with occasional comic relief.

(A NOTE IN PASSING: Troy Donahue, long absent from the screen, plays a minor character in the film named Merle Johnson, which is an inside joke. Merle Johnson is Donahue's real name.) DeNiro Pacino By JOE ALT ARE At the risk of sounding disloyal to the original film 1972's "The Godfather," which remains a remarkable screen achievement and gangster movie supreme I find myself saddled with the sad and near-impossible task of giving some indication of just how substandard and unsatisfying its sequel is. Francis Ford Coppola's ambitious "The Godfather Part Two" is a slow, aimless and annoyingly restless movie which purports to be about gangsterism but is, in fact, about the boredom of waiting. So much so that it eventually evolves into the very thing it's about. NOW AT THE REGENCY and selected area houses, the R-rated feature tells two seemingly unrelated stories whose only kinship is the first film the "connecting" film or link, if you will, between the beginning and ending of the Corleone Family saga.

One story, set in 1938, depicts Vito Cor-leone's introduction to America as a young man (Robert DeNiro), his marriage, his slow evolution into the esteemed Godfather of New York's "Little Italy" and mostly about his waiting throughout all this. Director Coppola shot these sequences foreign-film style, with an eye for grit and atmosphere, in Sicilian with English subtitles. Number two story, set against a late '50s background, has to do with Don Vito's son, Michael (Al Pacino), the successor to the Godfather title, Michael's failure and vari- ous crises in this role and his continual waiting and boredom. Michael's sequences also have a foreign-film look (with an eye for grit and atmosphere), but are spoken in English without subtitles. Anyway, the film spends a leisurely (and unbearable) three hours and 20 minutes alternating between the two stories, showing father Vito getting somewhere (slowly) and son Michael getting nowhere (equally slowly).

IT'S A NIFTY IDEA. Really. But tt simply isn't deserving of a three-hour-plus time budget. One hour (or even less) would be more like it. The trouble is, there's no real story here; the bulk and important parts of the Corleone A MLCRAM WEA1 sTm TODAY WITH ALL DAY PREVIEW -ofanoa ii4s ajn "YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN" 11:45, 3 25.

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