The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 48

48 The Boston Globe Thursday, December 19, 1974 'Godfather IF best crime film ever At Symphony Hall Conductor Tennstedt 1 KEVIN KELLY In the interim he has lost everything that he once thought had value. For him, now," there's nothing. finds a home from home performances are i Inezes fjecially LeeStrasbera as a cespieable Meyer? sky hood; Diane Keaton." as Michael's despairing wile; Robert DuvaDi as his'law- yer; and Robert De Niro, as Vito Adolini, nee Don Corleone, the role played in the later years of the character by Marlon Brando in the first movie. "The Godfather, Part by the wayt is the highest t- grossing movie of all time ($200,000,000 since its release in 1972). Whether "Part II" rakes in a sizable amount is a side issue.

But this much is sure. Inland of itself it's a stunning and together they're a remarkable achievement. -f" I i- Nothing but the likely promise of his own mur- der. Al Pacino conveys everything in Michael's character by mysteriously combining and ice. He verbalizes rage only on rare occasion, speaks mostly in a beckoning whisper.

The gradual remoteness ihax overtakes him is like an emotional glacier walling him off from the suffering of others, as well as of himself. Pacino's performance is worthy of an Oscar nomination or, to say that another way, would honor the Academy. All the similar reprisals, only the mania has grown worse. He will flatten any "enemy." One of those enefies is his weak older brother whom he has earlier forgiven but now has murdered. Coppola tells all this with the control of a vir-tuosic moviemaker.

In the anecdotal style of its format, "Part IF' is spellbinding and, for whatever moods may have been lost in the various rumored take-outs, I found no ellipses, loose-ends or confusion in the final print. The movie is both minutely detailed and openly panoramic. If "Part drew no firm philosophic coriclusion about the Mafia, "Part II" certainly supplies the moral. It ends with a long-held closeup of Al Pacino, as Michael, utterly alone on the dark pinnacle of his empire, his face devoid of expression, symbolic blood on the hand that cups his mouth. He had promised his wife he would make the Corleone family respectable in five years, but the deadline has long since gone.

Ary I vytiffiHOno) AMERICAN i TUfHr 6:30,8:15,9:55 IJA iTtlilWW'S-KTi CENTRAL I fSSaS (newly r.novated) VMcjCT tii r-tJjWVtiV- Ctntr.lSq.Cimb.64-04gS I I TW "The Godfather, Part H'is a direct prologue to its predecessor, as well as epilogue to its own story. But it is also something considerably more, a steadily fascinating enrichment of all the early material drawn from Mario Puzo's hackwork -best-seller. Director Francis Ford Coppola, who collaborated with Puzo on both has changed Mafia dross into celluloid gold. In the process he has created what I think is the single best gangster epic in the histo- ry of the movies! "Part II," which runs three hours 20 minutes and never loses intensity, is at the Savoy and suburban theaters. It is not to be missed.

What Coppola does is to tell two narratives casting shadows on each other. The movie flashes back and forth between the contemporary Mafia empire run by Don Cor-leone's heir, his youngest son, Michael, and the bloodied past of Don Cor-leone's early years in the Sicilian town of Corleone and, later, in New York's Little Italy. In Part Michael's high-minded plans to find a future outside the criminal profession of the "family" gradually were abandoned. Because one of his older brothers was murdered, and another brother simply thought unfit, Michael became the "family's head." And, under his rule, despite internecine wars, the Cor-leones have prospered. Michael is an almost dictatorial power, a shrewd manipulator of politicians and businessmen.

His reach is greater than even The Godfather, himself, could have imagined. He trafficks- not only in real estate, corruption, corporate enterprise, and murder but also in pre-revolu-tionary trade with Cuba, an involvement that proves short-lived. With cool cynical objec- tivity, the movie makes "THE NEXT MOVE" AN OUTRAGEOUSLY FUNNY MUSICAL REVUE TONITE I P.M. CHARLES PLAYHOUSE 74 WARRENTON BOSTON STUPE COMING By Michael Steinberg fGlobe Staff If I had a dollar for each time someone has asked me, "Who is Klaus Terms- I could take a week -off. making his United States debut, is guest conductor with the Boston Symphony last week and this he con- ducts Bruckner's Symphony tonight, tomor-lrow afternoon, and Satur-t day and his name was as good as unknown here." ft- Tennstedt, 43, is Music Director of the operatic land concert life of Kiel, a Irmajor Schleswig-Holstein jtseaport, and he has heavy steady commitments Kin Hamburg and Munich fvas well.

He has been in ItKiel just three years, and Jthe reason he is unknown there is that until that move he was active only tin the German Democratic Republic and in Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Eastern bloc countries. A guest engagement in Sweden the first in any jvWesteni country he was allowed to accept in 20 'years provided the opportunity for escape. His Witt, an operatic contralto, and their son, now 23 and studying chemistry in 'Hamburg, were fortunate-, able to make their way I put of East Germany and oin him within a few weeks. "It was late," says Tennstedt of his escape, but not too late." U- He. fell into clover.

Kiel Js a vigorous and expanding musical community. He made his debut in Berlin conducting Von Ei-Jiem's Duerrenmatt opera, Visit," just at a time Svhen the opera house, was posting a of tpera directors and man-, agexs, and since his move he has been busy to the saturation point. A tall, slender man with small, open, friendly lace, and with crackling physical vigor on the potii-im, Tennstedt feels he has 'lot of catching up of Various sorts to do. He to get acquainted Svith sorts of new inusic, American included, to he had no access in the cultural isolationism Ipf the GDR. He is beginning slowly to replace the large library of books, cores, and records that he 3iad to abandon!" Not least, he wants to learn English, of which he now knows very little (Russian is the universally required foreign language in East Ger- JAN.

5 Reserved Seats on Sale Now. Our Holiday VACATION DISCOUNTS Christmas present to your budget. perfectly clear that the Mafia's power is not only respected by various governments but avidly sought after by unscrupulous politicians. The compromised levels of this kind of relationship are dramatized in the characterization of a US Senator who, supposedly despising criminals in gener-" al, and Italians in particular, becomes hopelessly indebted to Michael Cor-! leone. The Senator drunk-enly murders a whore, or is made to think he did, and the scandal is scotched by the "family." Later when Michael is being grilled by a highly-publicized Senate committee, his ally makes a plea in his The sequences filling in Don Corleone's hard struggle in New York in the.

early. '1900s are smoothly integrated with the: plot's subsequent history. Born Vito Andolini in Corleone, he is mistakenly registered under the name of the town during his immigration processing on Ellis Island. He had been spirited out of Italy after his family had been murdered by a Mafia warlord. He happens into crime out of necessity.

He murders a swaggering, petty extortionist and slowly begins his own awesome climb to power. 'At least part of the motivation driving him is the 2000-year-old curse of Sicilian vendetta. In one of the movie's startling climaxes, Corleone returns to Sicily and murders the now ancient, doddering warlord responsible for the deaths of his father, mother and brother. But that vengeance doesn't, of course, close the circle. Near the end of the movie Michael is still extracting PREVIEW TONITE 7:30 W- THE FIRST MAGIC MUSICAL-COMEDY LIMITED ENGAGEMENT thru FEB.

2 FOR GROUP SALES CALL 423-4008 WILBUR THEATRE 252 Tremont Tel: 4269366 iftfe pricf of Packagt $RE00 per wU couple Including Tax Gratuity BACK TO LIFE! Story EORj Extend the magic and excitement of the holiday season. STARRING Klaus Tennstedt conducts Eighth Symphony tonight by Jack Connolly) many). When he made his North American' debut with the Toronto Symphony earlier this season, he found next morning ah' eight-column headline in the Toronto Star "Conductor and Soloist Dazzling." His heart sank: 'Dazzling' looked like a terrible, terrible word," he explained (in German) "those z's seemed so threatening." Tennstedt was the one who thought to reach for dictionary. The "dazzling" soloist on that program was the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and Tennstedt thinks that the adjective is almost culpably understated: "I have never heard the Beethoven concerto, particularly4 the slow movement, played so v-iv', Here Tennstedt- frac tures his way "through the English 7 required to rehearse the Boston Symphony, but says he can get help in translation from several players including Assistant Cbncertm.ster Emanuel" Borok. He loves the orchestra: "I am used to getting alongr well with orchestras, but I have never had such a sense of complete teamwork as we had here from the first moment of the first rehearsal." He finds Joseph Silverstein unique in ability, musicianship, knowl ii'iiK'iiBinmt GERTRUDE STEIN OLD OLD T0NI6HT $0 EARLY liRi TICKETS TorwtuT.UTi nunuu STARBUCK SHELLEY aim --a a PRFOBMNCE SQHECXJLS I FHI 27 4 8 00 PM' 28 -3 SHOWS 12 4 00' 8 8 00 PM SUN DEC.

29 ....2 00 8 6 00PM MON DEC. 30 7:30 PM" 31 8 0OPM 7 30PM" 'REDUCED PRICf 3 MOUDAY VCAJKMf SPECIAL "WCBV FAMILY WOHT HALF PRICE. Amwi 83. 82 50. 2.1,80 FOR SROUP TICKET FORMATION CALL 227-3208 GARDEN BOX OFFICE OPEN DAILY 10 AM to 8 00 PM SUNDAYS NOOW to 8:00 PM CLOSED CHRISTMAS i TICKETS ALSO AVAILABLE AT ALL TICKETRON OUTLETS f'iVN- BOSTON GARDjiXJ1 GALA NEW YEARS NEW ENGLAND HUB OF SPORTS the BSO in Bruckner's at Symphony Hall, (Photo edge, and authority he turns around they know; for whom the bell has among concertmasters he has known Tennstedt himself was concertmaster in Handel's birthplace, Halle, before he became a conductor and he praised the orchestra's quickness of response, the love with which they played last week's Brahms program, and above all what he calls "der "And now," he added, "I can't wait to hear them play Bruckner." AFT readies season Season to the American Film Theater's second season of five mo-n picture 'productions based upon'lreat works of.

the. "contemporary theater are 6w 'available at 600 participating 3 thea- ters. CHARLES PLAYHOUSE 78 Warrenton Boston Ovrtis jkka cpm Alfred Nash Patterson, Conductor CHRISTMAS AT OLD SOUTH Britten: A Boy Was Barn Mechem: Seven Joys Of Christmas Works by Praetorius, Buxtehude, Bach, Hoist, Handel and Familiar Carols. Sunday Dec. 22, 1974 8 pm Old South Church, Copley Boston Admission Free NOW THE KIND Tur KO mm lAAiw'ia11 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31st Complels Dinner 8-10 p.m.

Choice of Filt Mignoa Baksd Lobstsr CHAKfAEUE TOAST AT MIONIBHT) Unlntirraptii Dinting by Phil Cirro Trio featuring Hilm Scott and Roi Desminis Ous Lovely Molol Room-ContiaNtil Breakfast KEW. LEWD. TRUE. TENDER The Boston Critics 8:00 P.M. Only 2nd Ticket $1.00 Witt This THE NEW THEATRE 12 Holyoki St.

off Harvard Square PNOffi RESERVATION ICCErTEB: 661-1611) TONIGHT AT 8:30 pm KLAUS TENNSTEDT conductor Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in minor SYMPHONY HALL 266-1492 DG RCA records Baldwin Piano It's the co-slarrinq FT I SYMPHONY, a loRCHESTRA jk Dimtf tititititift THE MAKE. RESERVATIONS TODAYI hottest story since the Chicago and they're sitting on it. Telephone 245-6100 LORD WAKEFIELD Exit 35, Rt. 128, Wakefield 245-6100 A LAST MINUTE SHOPPER DREAM COME TRUE! DECEMBER 21 22 COMMONWEALTH ARMORY A family event Cheek tuH ot seasonal delights including SANTA CLAUS THEATRE DANCE MUSIC Hundreds of artists craftspeople For registration and information call-(617) 492-2900 2 DAYS TO GO POLYARTS' Third Annual SOOPM' JAN.

2... FBI. JAN. vl .00 PM: JAN 4 3 SHOWS 12NOON.4:M8 8XPM SUN JAN. i 2:0088.00 PM i i ENTERTAINMENT fANAVt5IQN5 5:30 7:35 9:55 566-4040 WE.

0NU 1 MIH. FROM EIIHEI II.I EISH.T DCCESSIHf 1 Mil 1 OF KU COMES HOW how how how he LIVED! he LOVED! JMLErXXJATJO HE FOUGHT! he DIED! mm ALL NEW! ill IT Lri ry a IN A BILLY WILDER FILM Ln Woody Allen's Hilarious Comedy. Hit! "Den't Diinh UlQlsr9 Appearing thru Dec. 22 Starring: HENRIETTA JACOBSON JULIUS ADLER Dinner plus Show From. person wi'mb ap-i' IeJ uoaoomooooi the truth explode VINCENT GARDENIA -SUSAMSARANDON ALLEN OAREIELD DAVID WAYNE CHARLES DURNING AUSTIN PENDLETON ond CAROL BURNLTT Screaploy by BILLY WILDER 6 1 A.

L-DIAMOND' based on the ploy by BEN rlECMTandCrlARLES MocARTflUR Directed by BILLY WILDER Executive Producer JENNIN05 LANO li I THE HAPPY ONE FOR THE HOLIOAYS by PAUL HONA5H TECflNICOO UNIVERSAL PICTURE PG SHOWN AT 1:30 3:30 CLEVELAND CIRCLE THE WTEISECTHM OF IEK(M SI. MB CHESTNUT MIL COMMONWEtlTK WI.I CHESTNUT Hill WE. ALSO Produced A WW Slightly higher Frl. Sat. clinnci theatre Reserve early (or belt seating RANDOLPH 986-5000 I 'it I r-- ('' i.