The New Republic

Hurricane Marlon is sweeping the country, and I wish it were more than hot air. A tornado of praise—cover stories and huzzahs—blasts out the news that Brando is giving a marvelous performance as Don Corleone in The Godfather, the lapsed Great Actor has regained himself, and so on. As a Brando-watcher for almost 30 years, I’d like to agree. READ MORE >>

The EwingsBy Michael O’Hara(Random House; $6.95)I came to bury Caesar, not to praise him, and was wrong on both counts. This is John O'Hara's last finished novel but not the last of the finished work that he left; and there's no point in pretending that he didn't know his job. That job is of some interest in American literary history. READ MORE >>

The first shot: in the middle of the vast Panavision-Technicolor screen, a closeup of two flowers, in soft focus. It looks like Red Desert revisited. There are distant buzzes on the sound track. The camera moves lowly over a greensward with figures on it, still misty and gentle. Then--wham!--we cut to a roadway, the buzzes turn into roars, and cars are whizzing at us. It's a racing picture! READ MORE >>

The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Meby Lillian Gish with Ann Pinchot(Prentice-Hall; $7.95)The Studioby John Gregory Dunne(Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $5.95)  READ MORE >>

Max Ophuls’ Lola Montes was made in 1955, in France and Bavaria, and, except for some festival showings, is now seen here for the first time in unmutilated form. (A butchered, dubbed version was released in 1959.) This is an important event both because of what the film is and is not, and because of what it crystallizes in critical approaches. READ MORE >>

Stop-Timeby Frank Conroy(Viking; $5.95) Frank Conroy's first book, Stop-time, is an autobiography, published at the age of 31. His life, though somewhat unconventional, has not been highly extraordinary or unusually exciting, and it has certainly not been celebrated; yet his account of it is extraordinary and exciting, and it will, I hope, become celebrated. READ MORE >>

Bonnie and Clyde  Warner Brothers READ MORE >>

Death Kitby Susan Sontag (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $5.75).  READ MORE >>

End of the Game by Julio Cortazar(Pantheon, $5.95) This collection of Julio Cortazar's stories is the first book of his that I have read, but I think I am not out of chronological order. His two novels, The Winners and Hopscotch, translated and published here in 1965 and 1966, were, I infer from book jackets, written after he wrote three volumes of stories. This latest book to be translated here is drawn from those three earliest books. READ MORE >>

What makes movies a great popular art form is that certain artists can, at moments in their lives, reach out and unify the audience—educated and uneducated—in a shared response. The tragedy in the history of movies is that those who have this capacity are usually prevented from doing so. The mass audience gets its big empty movies full of meaningless action; the arthouse audience gets its studies of small action and large inaction loaded with meaning. READ MORE >>