The Missouri Breaks. It's not up there in Day of the Locust proportions as far as disappointments go, but the truth is, it's not that far away. Now this is one of those cases where we get to shoot off the same day that the big boys do, so shoot their perceptions--but really, this doesn't look like much more than a bad movie with one wonderful centerpiece. The first main problem is that Thomas McGuane's celebrated writing is stinko. You can see almost every line spoken on the written page as soon as it's said; it doesn't look so good there either. The speeches are bloated, the cowboy banter is self-conscious, the themes muddy. Next big trouble comes when you begin to feel that the film was slapped together in about 62 hours. Those who love Nicholson will walk away angry because the middle-aged rebel has been strait-jacketed and glucosized into some lousy love story. The only palatable thing about his playing straight man is whom he's playing straight man to. Brando is just incredibly funny, careless, silly and selfish. He's like a drunk, bored, witty King at a State Dinner: everybody's genuflecting all over the place and he couldn't care less. He's rude, oblivious and endearing. Like the days when he was in the "Brando's-finished-and-nobody-screwed-him-but-himself" stage, he is fabulously entertaining in a one man show. But what's the good of other people in a one man show? The answer to that question can only be answered by Elliot Kastner who produced what will be lucky to break even, and Arthur Penn who directed with what appears to be a Throttlebottomesque authority.

The Damned. Lucino Visconti's epic film about the rise and fall of a German industrial family producing heavy arms in Hitler's Germany (modeled on the Krupps) is among the best historical films ever made. It provides a particularly good focus on the connection between sexual perversity and power in Nazi Germany, and the representation of the Night of the Long Knives is extremely chilling. Helmut Berger finds his ideal role as the mother-fixated incompetent heir, and the raven haired young girl he molests is enough to turn anyone into a pedophile. Peter Kaplan

LEVERETT HOUSE OLD LIBRARY

The Music Man Friday and Saturday at 7:30 and 10

SCIENCE CENTER B

Lucia (a film about women in Cuban history) Friday and Saturday at 7 and 9; New Filmmakers series at 7:30 at 9:30 on Sunday

SCIENCE CENTER C

Waiting for Fidel Sunday at 7:30 and 9:30

HARVARD-EPWORTH

Xala Sunday at 7:30

BRATTLE

Last Tango in Paris at 5:45 and 9:30; My Life To Live (Godard) at 8

CENTRAL I

Story of O at 6, 7:45, 9:30

CENTRAL II

Swept Away at 7:30 and 9:30

GALERIA

SaLut L'Artise at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10

HARVARD SQUARE

The Damned at 3:15 and 8:20; Death in Venice, at 1, 5:45, and 11

ORSON WELLES I

Tunnelvision at 4:15, 6, 7:45, 9:30, and 11:15