MOVIES : COMMENTARY : Declining Expectations : Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Godfather III’ is a prime example of why the greatest directors are no longer turning out great movies

Whether Francis Ford Coppola’s name is called out when any of the envelopes for best picture, best director or best screenplay are opened during the March 25 Oscar show at the Shrine Auditorium, he is already a winner: His “The Godfather Part III” has avoided being labeled a bomb and is doing respectable business at the box office.

For that, he has many to thank:

Bernardo Bertolucci, Brian DePalma, Sydney Pollack and Woody Allen, fellow filmmakers who have been critically diagnosed as geniuses and whose recent “The Sheltering Sky,” “Bonfire of the Vanities,” “Havana” and “Alice” are far worse ;

Peter Bogdanovich (“Texasville”), John Avildsen (“Rocky V”), Walter Hill (“Another 48 HRS.”) and Jack Nicholson (“The Two Jakes”), whose earlier sequels warned against expecting too much;

The die-hard Coppola fans among film critics who, in allowing benefits of the doubt that seldom affect their judgment of other directors’ work, concentrated on the positive elements of “Godfather III” and attributed its glaring deficiencies--notably, the “rushed” script and the absence of salary hold-out Robert Duvall--to conditions beyond his control;

And those members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. who voted the movie seven Golden Globe nominations and enabled Paramount Pictures to slap the Year’s Baldest Lie--”Most Acclaimed Picture of 1990”--on “Godfather III’s” newspaper ad. That ad line may corral a few more ticket buyers, but for those considering the source, a Golden Globe nomination is about as flattering as a 10+ on the Franklin Scale.

Actually, the earliest word on “Godfather III”--from industry insiders who saw a video rough cut weeks before the finished print was ready--was dead on. They reported that there were scenes in Part III that would rank with the best in Parts I and II, but that overall, the film was flat and uninvolving.

Well, it is flat and uninvolving, and given the material, the budget and the 16-year wait, it seems--at least to some Godfatherphiles--an infuriating waste of an opportunity. The Corleone Saga, until a few weeks ago, was on its way to being perhaps the only certifiable American film masterpiece of the second half of the 20th Century. Parts I and II still qualify, but on video shelves the epic will now be an unmatched set.

Even people who genuinely like “Godfather III” acknowledge that it took a free-fall from the level of perfection reached by its predecessors. To them, apparently, a disappointing work from a declining genius is better than the mediocrity that is passed off as excellence in American movies these days.

If Part III had turned out to be half as good as I and II, it would have trounced the competition in this leanest of years. When Coppola won the Oscar for best director in 1974 for “Godfather II,” his fellow nominees were Francois Truffaut (“Day for Night”), Bob Fosse (“Lenny”), Roman Polanski (“Chinatown”) and John Cassavetes (“A Woman Under the Influence”). This year, he may share the ballot with such greenhorns as Kevin Costner (“Dances With Wolves”) and Penny Marshall (“Awakenings”), and he seems clearly an underdog to Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese’s “GoodFellas” swept the major critics awards, and probably deserved to. It was the most audacious, personal and sure-handed work of any director in 1990. But does anyone seriously believe “GoodFellas” will ever be regarded as the equal of “Godfather I” or “II”?

More than anything, the giddy critical reaction to “GoodFellas,” and the acceptance of “Godfather III” as a capstone to the Corleone Saga, are comments on the lowered ambitions and expectations among filmmakers, critics and filmgoers. When Coppola was at his prime, making the first Godfather movies and “The Conversation” in the ‘70s, the competition was tough at the top. Fosse, Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Alan J. Pakula, William Friedkin, Robert Altman, Bob Rafelson and Mike Nichols were all doing their best work. Many of them had movies out during 1990, and a look at the best of them--Lumet’s “Q&A;,” Pakula’s “Presumed Innocent,” Nichols’ “Postcards From the Edge,” Rafelson’s “Mountains of the Moon,” Altman’s “Vincent & Theo”--shows how little we and they have come to expect of them.

What has happened to lead a Peter Bogdanovich from the height of “The Last Picture Show” to the depth of “Texasville,” or William Friedkin from the “The French Connection” to “The Guardian,” or Herbert Ross from “The Turning Point” to “My Blue Heaven,” or Steven Spielberg from “Jaws” to “Always,” or even Michael Cimino from “The Deer Hunter” to the title that seems to sum it all up, “Desperate Hours”?

Unquestionably, the skills that drove some of these filmmakers to the top have been deluded or sabotaged by the success and power that came with being up there. How can we expect Spielberg to demonstrate the passion and personal vision he had as a rising 25-year-old director when he is now a middle-aged mogul running a film factory? With all the notoriety that has been fed to the ravenous ego of Bogdanovich since “The Last Picture Show” and “Paper Moon,” it’s a wonder he knows at which end of the camera to stand. And with carte blanche from Orion Pictures and regular deep-heat massages from the New York critics, it’s understandable how Woody Allen would try to weave entire stories from single strands of ideas, as he has done with “Alice.”

But unless the mechanism of intellectual artistry is like a muscle that softens with age, there are other reasons to explain why the greatest directors are no longer turning out great movies.

Hollywood is often criticized for being slow to respond to social change and to tap into contemporary issues. Television does it better, so they say. It’s a bad rap. Hollywood, like the great white shark, is a perfect feeding machine. It pays outrageous sums of money to those with the keenest senses and attacks instantly wherever there is an issue, debate or trend to be exploited profitably.

The reason there were so many important movies made during the ‘70s is that the social and political revolutions at home dominated virtually every aspect of American life, including art and entertainment. Tough movies about important issues were the order of the day--they made money!--and the artists best at exploring the issues got the jobs and the creative freedom to go with them.

For the last decade, movies have reverted to entertainment for entertainment’s sake, Hollywood’s original mandate. But there’s been a difference. In the old studio days, the best directors became the moguls’ pets, rewarded with the best scripts, the best actors, the best crews and the most freedom. It was sort of an Old Boys’ version of the European patronage system and great movies often resulted. Under the complicated high-stakes structure of the current system, none of these things is necessarily true.

Actors and directors are often packaged in order to sell a deal, rather than to ensure the best picture. Production executives with thimblefuls of talent and reservoirs of energy control the story development process. Research has become the new religion and box-office grosses the new opiate. What does it matter who made “Home Alone” or “Ghost” or “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”? The directors could have been selected in a drawing and the movies would probably have done as well. The films deserve neither contempt nor praise; they are merely out there, like packages of carmel corn, pleasing the sweet tooths of American moviegoers.

The problem is that under today’s management, Hollywood equates quality with box office, and counts as geniuses not the filmmakers but the executives who are best able to channel stories in the direction moviegoers might want them to go. If the industry wanted to reward the kind of excellence it really appreciates, its Academy Award for Best Audience Manipulation would go to the Disney executive who insisted on that fairy-tale ending to “Pretty Woman.”

With all that in mind, perhaps it’s understandable why so many people are willing to forgive so much of what’s wrong with “The Godfather Part III.” There are scenes to savor in it, for sure, and a performance or two; that is more than can be said for all but a handful of 1990’s releases. If the script and editing hadn’t been rushed to meet bankers’ deadlines, if Paramount had paid Robert Duvall what he deserved, if Winona Ryder’s role hadn’t been taken over by Coppola’s unprepared daughter. . . and if, if, if . . . it could have been another great Godfather movie, instead of just another gangster movie.

Part III may not be a bad picture by itself. The “Godfather” virgins we’ve met who have seen only Part III thought it was fine. It seems that even in the profound creative slump he has been in since “Apocalypse Now,” Coppola is incapable of the kind of failure that Brian DePalma made of “Bonfire of the Vanities.”

But it’s carrying generosity to a fault to weigh “Godfather III” against anything other than Parts I and II. Even if it were the most acclaimed movie of 1990, it would have nothing to brag about. Being the most acclaimed movie of the Godfather Saga, now that would be something.