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KRYPTOLOGY.

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A passing demographer, faced with a crowd lining up to watch "Superman Returns," will find much cause for reflection. There, in heady profusion, will be the flower of American youth, all of them waiting--with that blend of sullenness and agitation peculiar to teen-age boys--to see whether the special effects will meet their fastidious standards. With them will be parents of both sexes, affecting tedium but actually in the throes of a hidden thrill, hoping for a nostalgic return to the Christmas of 1978, when they necked in the back row to the surge of the John Williams score and the voice of Christopher Reeve. Dotted here and there will be Supermaniacs--some of them sporting red underpants, others in panty hose of royal blue, none of them happily married. Last, and quite alone, will be a weary cineaste, submitting himself to two and a half hours of blockbuster because, and only because, it represents a final chance to witness the union of Eva Marie Saint and Marlon Brando.

They do not physically meet onscreen, but, for fans of "On the Waterfront," simply to see them together under the auspices of a single movie will be enough. Saint, her beauty still rendered mysterious by that faint air of distraction, plays the mother who adopted Superman when he first fell to earth, and to whom he now pays a return plummet, travelling back to the...

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