CINEMA

Black Orpheus (French). Marcel Camus' modern version of the Orpheus legend, set in Brazil, is one of the most impressive cans of film so far cast up on U.S. shores by the so-called New Wave of French film directors.

The 400 Blows (French). In another excellent New Wave film, the story of a runaway delinquent boy is turned into a broad indictment of the audience itself and society at large.

Ben-Hur. Hollywood's most colossal film deserves most of the stupendous adjectives that M-G-M has lavished upon it.

Third Man on the Mountain. Beautifully photographed in Switzerland, James Ramsey Ullman's Banner in the Sky has become a sort of alpine Huckleberry Finn.

They Came to Cordura. A Gary Cooper shoot-'em-up with depth, exploring the nature of courage--physical and spiritual. With Rita Hayworth.

Pillow Talk. Rock Hudson, as a songwriting satyr, amusingly shares a party line with Doris Day, an overdecorated interior decorator.

The Magician (Swedish). Writer-Director Ingmar Bergman pleases the eye and agitates the mind with a production often as eerie as a Kafka nightmare.

North by Northwest. Superb Hitchcock-and-bullets, with an enduringly spotless Cary Grant and a refreshingly unzippered Eva Marie Saint, involving foreign agents who are brash enough to think they can fill Grant's tomb.

TELEVISION

Wed., Jan. 13 The Bob Hope Buick Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* Hope took Jayne Mansfield to Alaska as a holiday present for U.S. troops, filmed his show there.

Thurs., Jan. 14 The Ford Show (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.).

Tennessee Ernie and his friends sing excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. Color.

CBS Reports (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). In a repeat broadcast, Howard K. Smith talks to India's Prime Minister Nehru, also religious leaders of India and the U.S., about "The Population Explosion."

Fri., Jan. 15 The Bell Telephone Hour (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Jose and Amparo Iturbi, Shei la and Gordon MacRae, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Dorothy Collins and Raymond Scott, Marge and Gower Champion in a program of music and dance. Color.

National Finals Rodeo (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). Saddle bronc, bareback bronc and Brahma bull riding, in the National Finals Rodeo at Dallas.

Cavalcade of Sports (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). The final hour of the All-Star Match Game Bowling Tournament, originally entered by 11,500 U.S. bowlers, striking for $60,000 in prize money.

Sat., Jan. 16 John Gunther's High Road (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). The author of Inside Russia Today turns his TV eye to Siberia, shows on film the operation of the trans-Siberian railway, the diamond mines at Yakutia, the emerging wealth and power of the region east of the Urals.

The Art Carney Show (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). In a one-man drama, Carney demonstrates the deterioration of an alcoholic. Color.

Sun., Jan. 17 Johns Hopkins File 7 (ABC, 12-12:30 p.m.). Guest Commentator Robert Neathery, of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, focuses on Mars in the third part of a series called New Worlds Waiting.

Conquest (CBS, 5-5:30 p.m.). "Can Man Live Forever?" is the hopeful title of a show that visits gerontologists at Baltimore City Hospital.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). "Dirigible" tells the story of ships lighter than air, from early balloons to the 1937 Hindenburg tragedy, and on to their use by the U.S. Navy today.

Maverick (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). An episode called Maverick and Juliet (presumably by William Shakesaddle) concerns the feuding Carterets and Montgomerys, and their respective children Julie and Sonny, who want to get hitched.

Sunday Showcase (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). An original drama tells the story of a political idealist who comes to power and is turned into a machine boss. Color.

DuPont Show of the Month (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). Farley Granger in an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Arrow smith.

Mon., Jan. 18 The Goodyear Theater (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). In Birthright, an American raised in Czechoslovakia (Eli Wallach) has 90 days to prove his identity. Failure means deportation.

THEATER

On Broadway Five Finger Exercise. With expert restraint, British Playwright Peter Shaffer lays out the battle lines of a marital war between a man of rough sensibility (Roland Culver) and his culture-fey wife (Jessica Tandy), with their son and a German tutor caught in no man's land.

Fiorello! Actor Tom Bosley makes the most of his Little Flower pot in a musical that overwhelms its faults with reminiscence and satire.

The Miracle Worker. Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke unsentimentally re-create the story of young Helen Keller and Nurse Annie Sullivan, in an uneven but theatrically stirring play by William (Two for the Seesaw) Gibson.

The Tenth Man. If Paddy Chayefsky's play is weak philosophically, it is nonetheless an authentic theater piece about mental illness treated by ancient methods in a Mineola, L.I. synagogue.

Heartbreak House. George Bernard Shaw's prolix but twinkling comedy about England on the unquiet eve of World War 1. With Maurice Evans, Diana Wynyard, Carmen Mathews.

Take Me Along. The musical version of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! is a nostalgically pleasant experience. Walter Pidgeon, Jackie Gleason, Eileen Herlie and Robert Morse.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Friday's Footprint, by Nadine Gordimer. A skilled author writes stories of whitest Africa, and of outwardly jolly characters within whom soundless voices cry for help.

Strike for a Kingdom, by Menna Gallic. Welsh coal miners strike, and so does a murderer in this sorrow-laced, comic novel by a woman who writes well of men.

Billy Liar, by Keith Waterhouse. The highly comic tale of a Yorkshire mortician's clerk who, Dick Whittington fashion, dreams of London but misplaces his cat and never gets there.

Diplomat, by Charles W. Thayer. The author draws on his 20 years as a U.S. career diplomat to write an informative and entertaining handbook of his profession's hazards and trade secrets.

Flower Shadows Behind the Curtain, translated by Vladimir Kean and Franz Kuhn. To judge from this ancient, improper tale, sexual hanky-panky was much the same in 12th century China as it was in Boccaccio's 14th century Italy.

The Papers of Benjamin Frankiin, Vol. 1, edited by Leonard W. Labaree. Philadelphia's journalist-gadgeteer-diplomat appears far livelier than his own homilies in this well-prepared collection that extends through his 28th year.

The World of James McNeill Whistler, by Horace Gregory. This well-done biography points out that for all his reputation as a drawing-room dandy, Whistler was an artist of great skill and integrity.

The Wisdom of the West, by Bertrand Russell. In 320 heavily but deftly loaded pages, the author has found room not only for a history of Western philosophy, but for an extraordinary helping of Russell.

The Liberation of the Philippines, by Samuel Eliot Morison. Not even breathing hard, the author reaches the 13th volume of his excellent U.S. naval history of World War II.

The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan. The newest D-"day" book provides a fascinating look at the invasion of Normandy.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Hawaii, Michener (1)* Advise and Consent, Drury (2) 3. Poor No More, Ruark (4) 4. Dear and Glorious Physician, Caldwell (6) 5. The Darkness and the Dawn, Costain (3) 6. Exodus, Uris (7) 7. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick (9) 8. A Fever in the Blood, Pearson 9. The Devil's Advocate, West (8) 10. The War Lover, Hersey (5) NONFICTION 1. Act One, Hart (1) 2. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (2) 3. The Status Seekers, Packard (6) 4. The Armada, Mattingly (5) 5. The Longest Day, Ryan (4) 6. The Joy of Music, Bernstein (7) 7. This Is My God, Wouk (3) 8. The Stolen Years, Touhy (8) 9. The Elements of Style, Strunk and White 10. For 2? Plain, Golden (9)

* All times E.S.T. *Position on last week's list.

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