MOVIES - Sept. 7, 1988

Boos and whistles greeted the Venice premiere on Tuesday of Italian director Franco Zeffirelli’s film about musician Arturo Toscanini, which features Elizabeth Taylor in her first movie role in seven years. Critics at the Venice film festival reportedly howled in derision during the screening of the joint Italian-French production “The Young Toscanini” and journalists jeered Zeffirelli during a news conference later. “It’s like a collection of television advertisements,” one Italian reporter told Zeffirelli, while others said Taylor appeared “almost embalmed” in her performance as the 19th-Century Russian soprano Nadina Bulisciov.