The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 57

Cos Anodes Slmcs t1, ''In, i 1 -i PART IV TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1974 5 -X Zr- I' Win VI mil 9 Y). vv; (-' It Cl 1 I 'J 7 -I V- 1 i- I- I FY I 4 MOVIE REVIEW 'Godfather IF: An Epic Expanded BY CHARLES CHAMPLIN Timti Entertainment Editor What you could say Is that "The Godfather" was such a hard act to follow that they preceded it instead. Actually, what now exists is one six-and-a-half-hour film, of which "The Godfather Part 1" was the middle half and of which "The Godfather Part II" now provides the opening and concluding quarters. (I hope one day we'll be able to see it re-parted chronologically.) The Bcale on which Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo have told their tale is epic, spanning six decades and three generations, with a glimpse of the fourth. Their commercial success is already established as heroic, and there is no reason to doubt that "Godfather II" will join the top moneymakers of all time.

But the creative, aesthetic success of this long enterprise is also, I think, on the heroic scale. "Godfather II" is quieter, less propulsive, less furiously violent than "Godfather and it demonstrably lacks the hypnotic patriarchal figure of Brando as Don Corleone. Still it is compellingly watchable. Authentic Glimpses The new film settles for its own strengths, and they are considerable, to say the least. It gives us, superbly, the Mafia-dominated Sicily of 1901, from which the don-to-be flees as a small boy after his father, elder brother and mother have been murdered by the village chieftain.

I don't remember the first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and the cattle-pen chaos of Ellis Island (with impatient clerks improvising names which families would carry for generations) ever caught more authentically. As in "Godfather Coppola and his cinemato-grapher, Gordon Willis, have engineered their color palette with superb and subtle ingenuity. The first Sicilian sequences are sun-bleached and flinty. The New York of the 1900s is redless, like faded lithographs, and has the sepia tone and the composition of the documentary still of Jacob Riis and the other slum decriers of the period. Isolated and Besieged Much of the latter-day action, particularly in the family fortress-encampment on Lake Tahoe, is heavily shadowed, closed off, both isolated and besieged.

Few movies have used visual tone so va ryingly to heighten, almost subconsciously, the operative mood of a story. The young Vito Corleone (clerk-named for his home village) makes his way in the Italian ghetto of lower Manhattan that was to be updated 70 years later in Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets." Indeed, the young Vito is played by Robert DeNiro from "Mean Streets" and "Bang the Drum Slowly." It is a sensational performance, advancing Corleone from the thin, pale youth working for pennies in a grocery store to the solid leader of his family, returning in triumph to settle the old score in Sicily, parlaying thievery and murder into power and respect. DeNiro, hoarse-voiced and imperiously handsome as he grows jn assurance, does an amazing job of preparing us for the Brando we remember. The makings of an American overlord are half the story. The rise and fall of Michael constitute the other.

To a great extent, "Godfather can, I think, be seen as a corrective, erasing any lingering romanticizing of the. characters and the life-Please Turn to Page 10, Col. 1 WHERE NONE HAS GONE BEFORE knows what choice truffles lurk below the' oaks ond willows of Northern California soil? Ralph left, and Henry Trione think their dog Jumbo might. Times photo by Christopher Springer JACK SMITH Codicil to the Santa Clause My colleague Steve Harvey will be in enough trouble over his story on Page One of Sunday's paper saying that, all things considered, Santa Claus is a bad influence in our culture; so maybe I can help him out by starting a diversion. As Harvey pointed out, doctors rap Santa Claus- for giving the impression that it's jolly be overweight; some brown or black people think he ought to be brown or black; feminists think he ought to be a woman; animal lovers don't like the way he cracks his whip over his reindeer, and child psychologists warn that when children find out there isn't any Santa Claus they tend to distrust their parents evermore.

All but the last of these complaints, it seems to me, are without merit. I doubt if the annual appearance of a fat old Santa Claus gives anyone the idea of putting on weight; anyway, most Santas these days look as if they'd been hired from the food line out in front of the Union Rescue Mission. As for turning Santa into a woman, I see no more for that than for turning George Washington into a woman, or Venus into a man. Even if Santa is only a myth, he is a male myth, and might as well stay that way. Anyway, I'm old-fashioned enough to think that women oughtn't to be climbing up and down fireplaces in the dead of night.

On the other hand, I am always delighted by those Santa Belles we see on our downtown street-corners during the season, slim, young and vivacious in their Santa costumes of red velvet and rabbit fur, ringing their bells, dancing to keep their bare bare legs warm, singing "Jingle Bells" and crying "Merry Christmas" when you drop some money in their chimneys. As for making Santa black or brown, it's perfectly all right with me, if black or brown children like him better that way. But Santa happens to be a Western European, and he might as well stay white. As for animal lovers, they are not being very practical. I have never tried driving a team of reindeer, but I imagine they are something like mules and aren't going to haul an overloaded sled through a snowy sky unless they have to.

If we are going to have Santa Claus at all he might as well stay in character and be a jolly old pink fat man, though a bit quick to go to the whip. On the other hand, it's all right with me if he's black, svelte and female and drives a Honda with a sidecar. What makes Santa Claus a bad man is not the: myth itself, whatever image we choose to give him, but the practice of making small children truly believe that the old fraud exists. One doesn't need a PhD. in child psychology to see that when the disillusionment comes, and the kiddies find out that Mommy and Daddy have been putting them on, they are likely to take anything the old folks tell them from then on with a grain of salt, not to say a healthy disbelief.

Worse than the moment of disenchantment itself is the period of pretense that follows. The little boy knows there is no Santa Claus, but his parents go on telling him there is. He is embarrassed. He doesn't want them to know he knows, because he doesn't want to embarrass them. STALKING THE WILD TRUFFLE The Great California Mold Rush or.

the France. The talk turned to truffles and the men agreed that they were worth pursuing. The Los Angeles group, identified by Stone as Ken Childs, Robert Lynch, M. D. Jameson and Jack Marten, suggested that since Trione and Stone live in Northern California, where truffles are more likely to be found, they should be the ones to go on to Italy to visit the only "school" in the world where truffle-hunting dogs are trained The school is near Alva in the Piedmont district Truffles are root fungi, which is what makes them so tough to find.

The biggest and best grow in southern France and northern Italy and have been known and loved as an embellishment to food for centuries. Rich Romans enjoyed them ago. In France, they are hunted by pigs. Pigs are crazy about truffles and with their keen sense of smell are good at locating them. Moreover, the pig doesn't just point, it digs.

It digs so enthusiastical-Please Turn to Page 8, CoL 3 BY HARRIET STIX SANTA ROSA A pair of bankers have embarked on a hunt for buried treasure in the rolling hills north of this quiet Sonoma County town." They are after truffles a delicacy which grows underground and which lately has been retailing for more than $200 a pound. Never mind that most authorities believe there are no edible truffles in Northern California, or anyplace else in the United States for that matter. J. Ralph Stone, president of Great Western Savings and Loan Assn, and Henry Trione, chairman of the board of Wells Fargo Mortgage suggest that the reason truffles have not been found is that no one has hunted them systematically. They are out to change that "We feel that what is needed is entrepreneurial aggressiveness Stone says.

Their search started last May, when Stone and Trione, along with some Southern California bankers and their wives, took an ocean voyage to Nice Stripping, the New Shin Game TELEVISION REVIEW 2nd Installment of Life With Ben liiaiiiilly mmKW 'V. These may seem complex feelings for a small child to have, but I remember having them, and they were acute. For a year or two I dreaded Christmas, because of the anguish this masquerade caused me. Besides, what sense does it make to tell children there's an old windbag in red clothes who will give them toys every year if they're good, but not if they're bad. What chance does a 5-year-old have of being good for a solid year? About as much chance as an Airedale.

The beauty of Christmas is that people give to each other. Can you imagine what kind of a story "The Gift of the Magi" would have been if the young husband and wife thought their presents had come from Santa Claus, or the Magi, instead of each other? Recently I gave my grandson his first bicycle. There are not many more gratifying pictures than the look on a boy's face when he sees his first bicycle. I wanted the kid to know it came from his grandfather, and not from some other windy old fraud. However, I don't think it's all humbug.

What I want for Christmas is to take a Santa Belle to lunch. I WAX AWAY-When the organically treated paraffin mask comes off, so does the grime. That's the theory behind cosmetician.Adrien Arpel's new skin treatment at Robinson's. For details see "On Page 2. Times photo by Mary Framp ton BY CECIL SMITH Tinift Ttlevision Critic Loring Mandel's "The Whirlwind" tonight (Channel 2, the second 90-minute play of the four-play CBS series that might be called Lewis Freedman's Benjamin Franklin Quartet, is unlike the other three in that it is concerned with the broad scope of Franklin's life rather than an individual event In a series of flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks, Mandel's play follows the life of that incredible man from his boyhood as an apprentice printer to his first diplomatic mission to London on behalf of the colonies.

Here we have Franklin, the printer; Franklin, the inventor (of the Franklin stove); Franklin, the scientist (his experiments with electricity); Franklin, the publisher and author (Poor Richard's Almanack); Franklin, the wayward husband and casual father. 'Harmonious Multitude As you may recall, it was producer Freedman's device in this four-part series to illustrate "the harmonious multitude that was Benjamin Franklin" by having different actors play Ben Franklin in the various plays. In this second play, he outdid himself with Beau Bridges playing the youthful Franklin and his father Lloyd Bridges as the Franklin of the middle years. Lloyd does double duty, not only playing Franklin from his 30s through his 50s but also appearing as the gout-ridden Franklin of 71 having his portrait painted "I'm doomed," he says, "to be painted by Frenchies. Never a Gainsborough It is while he is sitting for his portrait and making sour comments on the artist that in Mandel's play, he remembers details of his life, including his teen-age fervor (with Beau as the youthful Ben) and his ambition to establish himself as a man of substance in Philadelphia, which meant the taking of a' bride from the Quaker gentry.

Surprise for the Bride His bride is Deborah Read (Susan Sarandon) and Ben immediately presents her with a son "a child to be born that I fathered." Asks the bride: "Who's the mother, one of them whores?" The child is his bastard son Willie. Throughout their life, Deborah, the foster mother, loathed Willie; when her own son died as an infant, she hated Willie all the more; she was jealous of Willie, feeling Ben had more regard for his son than for her or their daughter Sara. Early, Deborah asks Ben: "Can one hate and Jove togctherr But their marriage, though it endured 44 years, is more hate than love. hen Deborah prows older (Shcree North playi her to Lloyd Urines' Ecn), ihe'i a chrcw working in the family rlcase Turn to Tg. 18, Col 1 HARRISON WELL OFF THE PACE Gently Weeping for a 'Dark Horse' THE VIEWS INSIDE BOOKS: Gerard Colby Zilg's "Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain" by Alden Whitman en Page 4.

DANCE: Ballet La Jeunesse ot Wilshire Ebell Theater by Lewis Segal on Page 15. MUSIC: Pacific West Coast Opera Company'! "Amahl end the Night Visitors" by Daniel Cariaga on Page 13. Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra at Santa Monica Cvic Auditorium by Walter Arlen on Page 10. American Youth Symphony at UCLA by Robert Riley on Page IX TELEVISION. "This Is the West That Was" end "Roll, Freddy RoB" by Kevin Thomoi on Poge 18.

concert performances. After all, he was the first of. the ex-Beatles to go on the road and the expectations were enormously high. Maybe if his voice had been stronger and he had done more of his own songs things would have worked out better. Maybe the album would remove the growing doubts.

Unfortunately, the new "Dark Horse" album, one of three albums considered in today's YESNO test, doesn't help Harrison's case. I don't think more of his eongs if they came from this album would have really helped the concerts at alL Jt looks as if John and Paul knew what they wcrt doing when they kept most of the fjace en the Beatles' albums for their own congs. Georfe Harrbon's "Dark Horcc" (Apple MAS BY ROBERT HILBURN Tbm Rck Mmk Oitic If we can all set aside for a moment the hero worship that continues to surround the four ex-Beatles, the arrival of George Harrison's third solo album may give us all the evidence we need to'put his artistic abilities into perspective. Is Harrison, in short, as worthy as the best moments of his promising but inconclusive "All Things Must Pass" album suggested or is he as sadly mediocre as the bulk of his muddled "Living in the Material World" album and his recent concert appearances would have one believe? Maybe, I reflected before listening to the new album, the critici have been too hard on AND OTHER FEATURES Pear 3 Dr. Alvarez, 8 Bodgt Poge 6 Art 2 17 Joyce Hobw Poge 9 On fashion, Page 2 Pages 16,18.