Francis Ford Coppola made four great movie masterpieces in a row in the commercial studio system -- "The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part Two," "The Conversation" and "Apocalypse, Now." He is probably the only living American filmmaker of whom that can be said.

He hasn't been a commercial filmmaker in many years. That doesn't mean, however, that the films he's making now entirely for himself are great, or even convincing, cinematic art.

His film, "Youth Without Youth" from a Mircea Eliade novel and starring Tim Roth, was shown to critics here but never opened locally. Its box office in places where it did open was a tiny fraction of negligible. In a recent interview, a dazed and stunned Coppola admitted that "no one went to see it. No one."

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