THE GODFATHER

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola Paramount

Growing up in a second generation, Catholic, Italian-Polish neighborhood was an educational experience, especially since I was from a third generation conglomerate family. Watching friends’ fathers make wine from their jungle-garden-backyard grapevines, feed their pet pigeons and create these grandiose grottos with piped-in hymns and polychromed mini-falls was an introduction to a cultural aspect of life only topped by delicious ethnic foods I would otherwise have been sadly sheltered from. A classmate’s father was legal counsel for an unnamed but important organization. My curiosity remained unsatisfied ’cause they moved to a wealthy suburb, Grosse Pointe, but when I saw The Godfather it suddenly seemed like meeting her family.

Recently a group of Italian-Americans, indignant over The Godfather due to the alleged image it presents of a stereotype of their nationality, bought entire theatre house tickets and stood in the lobby preventing others from viewing the openings. This is oversensitive and unfortunate because not only does the picture, beyond a general view, deal with far more than Sicilian gangster warfare but it depicts more about a startlingly American perspective — how second-class citizens form secret societies and make fortunes in order to become accepted into American society. Interestingly, the majority of the production staff and cast have Italian surnames which might indicate a capability to depict this era more realistically.

The Godfather is a survey of the Sicilian-American Corleone “Family” based on the novel by Mario Puzo (who co-wrote the script). It follows the character of the Godfather, Don Vito Corleone (perfectly portrayed by Marlon Brando) and his youngest son, Michael, the subsequent family lord (A1 Pacino from Panic in Needle Park). This all-inclusive Mafia Family displays the frightening intrigue and evolving complexities of organized crime during the decade between 1945-55.

The movie contains all the necessary elements for a powerful, compelling, classical epic: strong substance, interest ingredient, an anxious audience. It doesn’t disappoint. Managing to combine these factors (and more) to perfection isn’t an easy task considering the touchy subject matter. But this is tasteful, never melodramatic or boring, primarily because there’s an incredible .mount to digest and it isn’t ever redundant. There’s a lot to say and everyone involved achieves the common goal of expressing it with the added delight of their individually enthusiastic performances. The screen delivery is much like the book, I imagine, gradually revealing connected episodes, each contingent to the following. It flows. None of this flashback stuff.

The only scene with “artistic” tendencies is also obviously symbolic, making its interpretation lucid. The meaning of the important role of The Godfather and its connection with the additional respect granted to a Don who holds that role is revealed. Michael, to gain the trust of his next victim, Carlo Rizzi (his brother-in-law) becomes Godfather to Carlo’s son. While Michael recites “I believe in God, I denounce the devil” we witness the Corleone family’s enemies offed one by one, eliminating imminent danger. This act initiates both Michael’s responsibility for Rizzi’s son and, more importantly, the Family welfare.

Michael, however, had tried to avoid becoming integrally involved in family biz, but he has the same simple integrity Brando skillfully puts across as the Don.* We discover Mike as the perfect heir to Don Vito Corleone’s empire; Sonny, the choice by birthright, doesn’t exhibit the ability or discipline to control and manipulate others for the Family’s good because his macho-temper is too easily raised. Mike grasps the concept of holding the strings (in a manner perhaps less compassionate, more businesslike). But this indicates the changing times — the Americanization. After Don Vito’s death, Michael’s reign begins, with the destruction of the old order (shooting the enemies ends the old war) taking care of family business in his own modern style but using the same legendary tactics. The evolution from politically accepted and supported (via graft) gambling and prostitution to drug rackets (a conflict/crisis for Don Vito Corleone) is another example of the changing tradition. Now reflecting the slickness of Las Vegas, the roots are transplanted from the relatively earthy NYC.

The casual acceptance of violence and corruption still exists. It’s dismissed as belonging to ‘their’ standards of right and wrong. We’re shown the crass underworld, its overworld nature, but no judgement is stated. It’s all legitimate. Fascism was legitimate. So is the ‘revolution’ among a growing circle. And following suit, radicals permeate public office, thereby institutionalizing their revolution. One of the dangers implicit is the rally for unity, ‘a unified front,’ which too often can mean the abolition of dissent. Families with a patriarchal figure reappear (God-like fathers) similar to the Mafia family life — the personal and business aspects are both interwoven and conflicting. The wedding of Don Corleone’s daughter demonstrates this all-pervasiveness: The Don’s friends/employees who are invited find their license numbers and photographs taken 1?y the FBI.

The reason why it’s difficult to walk away from The Godfather saying the morals of Sicilian culture are wrong is partially because they developed in receptive not sterile atmospheres. The syndicate is no longer the revolutionary protection needed in Sicily — what appears to come from a foreign milieu is actually an extension of America’s dimmer side. The side that allows the insistence on deleting the word “Mafia” from the script.

The violence surpasses Bonnie and Clyde not only in quantity but because the premise of serving justice doesn’t apply in this case. This isn’t a story of the law vs. the lawless. Justice is finely defined by the Godfather in an opening scene with an acquaintance whose daughter has been raped and wants the raptists murdered. Don Vito Corleone questions the plea: “You come to me without respect or friendship and ask me to kill — your daughter is living — this is not justice.” He exercises his divine right to make decisions of life and death, exposing the intricate rules of ritualized vengeance.

Even though The Godfather resembles other fervently furious films (Straw Dogs, Clockwork Orange) in its extremely violent tendencies, the audience finds it hard or embarassing to identify with the characters’ actions. However, the difference is that The Godfather’s cast not only create their circumstances, they know — even anticipate — the probable outcome and are equipped to reciprocate.

The director/writer Francis Ford Coppola (of Patton fame) makes everything clear by packing the movie full of meaningful detail which the audience is responsible for absorbing, interpreting and understanding. His presentation of the facts in fictitious form doesn’t alter their reality, though. That’s why the violence and corruption is legitimate; it’s real, garish and horrid, but shocking as it is, it exists. The point isn’t belabored, merely viewed in the context of the story: a well-balanced screenplay, that takes all that worked for it as a novel, condenses it and produces all that makes a successful film.

Robbie Cruger

CABARET

Directed by Robert Foss Allied Artists Pictures

Cabaret is a devastating, magnificent, ineffable motion picture. It is a wellwrought melange of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, those autobiographical recits of a naive, fey Cambridge don gone to Europe to seek — perhaps himself, and its two theatrical step-children, I Am A Camera, and, of \ course, Cabaret.

Cabaret is one of those films in which, fortuitously, one can say historical accuracy be damned, because if not . . . Then you’re stuck with several gritty problems. Like what does one do with the Spartacists; Rosa Luxembourg: the dirty deals made by German big business with the Nazis in those pre-Nuremburg rally, Arturo Ui days of Freikorps machine gun politics. Or what about the Berlin police department, which put up poems on streetcorners decrying the sordid state of the city — “Berlin, you’re dancing with death./Berlin you’re drowning in the mire./Stop! Think a while —” The problems of real, booklike historical accuracy are immense. And besides, that wouldn’t be Entertainment.

But wait — there are things to see and use. Look at George Grosz. His caricatures —“Amputee musicians, 1927” or “Berlin Stock Exchange, 1926,” those angular, spare-yet-horribly-detailed cartoons. Foreboding. Awe-full, forced perspective teeth, grins, leers. Bristly pudenda spread open like so much calves liver.

Suddenly —. the faces are coming to life. In color, in a mottled, distorted mirror. Lights! Music! Action! “Welkommen! Bien Venue! Welcome!” Grosz flesh transmogrified to gross flesh.

A cabaret. What a perfect metaphor for Germany prior to the Holocaust. If he does not deal in perfect historical accuracy, director Bob Fosse managfes, with the greatest of elan, to maintain an emotional verisimilitude that brilliantly captures the historicity of that special, often horrendous milieu.

Look at the Master of Ceremonies, stunningly portrayed by Joel Grey T a white-faced, cupid-bow-lipped caricature of a man. His second-rate songs and cheap patter reflect (through Fosse’s insightful montages) what is happening outside the club. The MC, you see, never stirs outside the club. His world, of pastel oleos, Kleig lights and mirrors is reflective, not objective.

Yet there is an outside world, in which Sally Bowles, who sings at the Kit Kat Klub, expatriate American daughter of a diplomat, and Brian Roberts, the Cambridge don, exist. It is a breezy, carefree world, where rent is 50 Marks a month — scrounged catch-as-catch-can, and where scteaming into the roar of an elevated train is not outre, but exuberantly joyful. Berlin, in its “divine decadence” was as much a Greenwich Village-like haven in those years as Paris was just after the First World War. Except for one thing: under the veneer of gaity, of passion, of life, lay a moral decay — a fetid, putrid, gangrenous canker that, horribly, was not burned out even after Dachau, even after World War II.

Fosse manages to continually juxtapose Brian, Sally and their adventures, with the tawdry interior of the cabaret. In doing so, he peels away at the veneer with all the competence of a skilled surgeon.

Basically, the storyline follows Brian’s adventures: his first encounter with Sally at a cheap pension where she’s his next-door neighbor. Their growing friendship which culminates in their becoming lovers. And then their dual affair with a young German nobleman, whose Rolls Royce and country estate provide a decadence the divinity of which is sybaritically Olympic. Then the denouement — Sally’s pregnancy, her ultimate refusal to accept Brian’s proposal, an abortion, and Bri’s departure.

Simple? Perhaps. But Isherwood’s original was simple, too. What made it fascinating, however, were the filmic images that for an instant were caught by the writer’s eye, or the visions that existed for a split second in his peripheral vision. The plot is fleshed out by sub-plots that, in a minor way, attract our attention as much as the odyssey of Brian and Sally.

The irony seldom stops. As the Master of Ceremonies at the Kit Kat Klub begins a pit-a-pat Tyrolian song, three Nazi thugs outside stomp a man who had thrown an SD alms-collector out of the place. As Brian and Sally and Baron Maxmilian von Heune, their nobleblooded lover, whirl in their petit waltz a trois, the MC caricatures them onstage in a bawdy menage.

As Sally Bowles, Liza Minnelli is, in a word, marvelous. Her tacky makeup, emerald-green nails, painted-on beautymark and the character she and Fosse have set, make her performance formidable. Liza’s Sally talks to loud, whispers too shrilly, chews with her mouth open and becomes an unsympathetic character. And when she collapses, whether in a paroxysm of self-pity or genuine sorrow, and her'makeup cracks, she becomes at once childlike and vulnerable. Liza Minnelli gives to Sally Bowles a fleshing out that never existed in Isherwood’s original or on the stage. And when she decides against the security of a Cambridge don’s cottage and diapers on the washline, we know that it is not because she cops out, but because it’s too late for her to make that particular choice.

Against that, Michael York’s Brian Roberts is the classic greenhorn. His trek to Berlin is a kind of rite, much akin to an Aborigine’s walkabout. Thb^ problem with the part as written by screenwriter Jay Allen is that we never really get to know Brian, or get strong feelings about what will happen to him after he leaves Berlin. Yet, York does well with his character, making him reflective — a mirror by which we see Sally Bowles all the clearer.

But Joel Grey’s Master of Ceremonies is the film’s truly outstanding performance. Grey, with pinched, nasal German accent syllable-perfect, minces, kicks, struts, clowns and fawns his way through the cabaret scenes, truly bringing the decadence of Berlin to life. He squirts seltzer on women-wrestlers, making mud of their portable sandpit. He thrusts his head between the sequincrotched legs of chorusgirls, fondling their threadbare costumes, pinching, tweaking, grabbing.

Everyone’s the same to this chalkfaced character. He doesn’t care what audience he plays to, so long as he gets his laugh. Who cares if the audience wears dinner clothes or brown uniforms, so long as they laugh and clap.

And when the lights go out, after a chilling pan down the mottled mirror, in which red and black swastikas and Nazi uniforms have replaced the dinner clothes, where pistol belts and winged medals ripple in the camera’s lens, one feels, truly, that Bob Fosse has not made Cabaret too kind; he has in fact made it just right.

Dr. Gonzo

SHORTS

THE CONCERT FOR BANGLA DESH — A blessedly simple film record of a monumental event. Director Saul Swimmer keeps his camera trained on the stage, and lets the performers speak for themselves. No editorializing, no fancy cutting, just the things you’re interested in: the music and the artists. As such, highly recommended. And Leon Russell is as satanically magnetic as ever.

SILENT RUNNING - If I tell you that this is a science fiction flick about a lonely astronaut who has a meaningful relationship with the three miniature machines who service his spacecraft — well, you’ll probably laugh. You shouldn’t. Silent Running is a weirdly imaginative movie, the kind that grabs you and keeps you with it for a full hour and a half. Douglas Trumbull’ who worked on 2001, has done a clean, sharp job of directing, especially in the scenes employing miniature space ships in place of the real thing. Best of all are the machines, called Drones, who keep Bruce Dern company. They look like jukeboxes you see stuck up on the walls in cheap luncheonettes, except that they come equipped with mechanical arms and legs and can be taught how to play poker.

WHAT’S UP DOC? - Peter Bogdonavich’s tribute to the screwball comedies of the thirties is just what you’d want it to be: very funny. The comic bits date back to the twenties silent comedies and up to Love Story. They’re dispensed by the funniest group of character actors assembled since last year’s A New Leaf. And both Streisand and O’Neal are more appealing than they’ve ever been before. Bogdonavich has started his career in such an auspicious manner, that it seems inevitable that some critics will eventually begin to malign him for his reverence for old movies. (Some already have.) What’s Up Doc? proves that he should ignore them.

GUMSHOE — A limp attempt to revive the Bogart-tough detective movies, with Albert Finney portraying a daydreaming small-time entertainer who fast talks himself into a series of murderous jams. There’s something particularly dispiriting about seeing a distinctly American genre strained through a lifeless English sensibility; Paul Newman did this whole number much more effectively in Harper. You can’t go home again.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 - Maybe you like Kurt Vonnegut. I don’t. Maybe you’ll like this expensive, carefully made (by George Roy Hill) version of his best-selling novel. I didn’t. For all of Dede Allan s perceptive editing, and Hill’s vaguely comic attitudes, I couldn’t muster up a damn whether Billy Pilgrim lived or died. But then neither could Billy, and that’s the point of the movie. Some point. A passive, non-verbal hero and a whimsical outlook on life are not enough to keep me amused for two hours. But, like I said, maybe you like Kurt Vonnegut. J.K.

THE TROJAN WOMEN - A classy drama but not as classic in film form as in Greek Tragedy. Interest held in this plotless epic through Cacoyannis’ fine direction and Katherine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Genevieve Bujold’s intriguing performances. The drawn-out theme is movingly depicted: Women’s struggle (particularly this former royal family) living in the wartorn ravages of Troy (or any homeland for that matter). Oh, the grand life is painful!

X, Y, & Z — This is a really entertaining hate affair. Kinda reipinds me of a 1972 version of a good 60’s romance intrigue. Lotsa groovy camera work and decently paced. The humero*us, biting dialogue carries the load typical of films from plays (the ending in which all three are in bed together is a more congruous idea but this one keeps ya hangin’ — right in step with the movie’s sophistication). Yes, Liz Taylor’s still beautiful at 40 and hasn’t stopped fighting. R.C.

VANISHING POINT - This guy who used to be a racecar driver until his unorthodoxies got him read out of the league, and a nark until this California beach goddess turned him on to grass and that free-lovin’ hippie sex, gets a gig driving a car from Colorado to San Francisco, see, so he takes a bunch of speed and decides to do it in 18 hours. Along the way he meets a desert hippie whose old lady rides around nude on a cycle all day, a grizzled old desert rat, a couple of stereotype fags, a revivalist played by Severn Darden of “Venus in Furs” fame, and Delaney and Bonnie. He also blitzes the cops in three states, occasioning a great manhunt, occasioning a slew of “the last great American individual” Wisdom from a blind, black deejay who steals the show even if those ugly stupid Rednecks known to every small town beat him up for goin’ agin the Law. Great trash if you’ve got no cinematic standards at all, despite a tendency to come off like a made-forTV cross between Two Lane Blacktop and Easy Rider. On the other hand, in a year it’ll be on Dialing for Dollars (cleaned up a bit, though), so use your own discretion if you feel you must.