Word: idolator
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BYRON JAN IS: RACHMANINOFF'S CONCERTO NO. 2 and TCHAIKOVSKY'S CONCERTO NO. 1 (Mercury). With a matinee idol's face and a technique that suggests a man breathing on filaments of silk rather than pounding a piano, Janis stands up to his Billboard ratings with these favorites. His gift for phrasing is remarkable and very much his own, and Antal Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra balance his sweetness with spirited orchestral reading...
...Idol will be remembered, if at all, as the movie that gave a second-stage lift to the career of Michael Parks. As Adam in John Huston's movie version of The Bible, Parks wears little more than foliage. In this befuddled study of London's dashing young set, he vigorously fleshes out an even barer role as a beatnik U.S. artist...
Parks preaches rebellion against Momism to the best friend (John Leyton) who idolizes him. He persuades Leyton to pay half the rent on a seedy flat, uses it to enjoy Leyton's girl friend (Jennifer Hilary) and finally seduces Leyton's divorced mother (Jennifer Jones). Shortly afterward, The Idol explodes with the kind of gut-clutching Greek passion that seems altogether alien to the cool contemporary scene set forth in the rest of the picture...
Director Daniel Petrie sponges up London's local color, but The Idol tantalizes chiefly by concentrating on Parks, whose passing resemblance to Laurence Harvey offers no insurmountable obstacle. Intense, slow-burning and confidently virile, he has a star actor's natural instinct for arousing curiosity about what he will do next. Parks pulls attention to himself like a vagrant, possibly savage tomcat whose animal responses need not be understood to be interesting. And he makes most of moviedom's clean-jawed young swains look about as dangerous as campfire boys...
...idol and guide has been Leonard Bernstein, who showed that the composers and conductors of popular music could emulate the classical artists-and vice versa-without getting laughs. Says Previn: "Bernstein has made it possible not to specialize in one area of music. You no longer have to do just Broadway shows, or movies, or conduct-you can do any or all of them...