The Magnificent Seven. The best western so far this year, this film is an impressive and occasionally profound contemplation of the life of violence.

The Virgin Spring (in Swedish). Ingmar Bergman's mythical and violently beautiful miracle play, derived from a medieval ballad about a farm girl's rape-murder and her father's vengeance, is as clear and grave as a Mass.

Village of the Damned. The nifty little horror tale of an English town whose populace is briefly paralyzed, its women mysteriously impregnated.

The Love Game (in French). Jean-Pierre Cassel, playing a ludicrous but lovable mixture of Don Juan and Peter Pan, emerges as the funniest Frenchman since Tati's Hulot.

General della Rovere (in Italian). Back in his top form of the 1940s, Roberto (Open City) Rossellini directs a poignant piece about a trivial swindler--brilliantly played by Vittorio De Sica--who stops impersonating the role of a wartime hero to become one.

TELEVISION

Tues., Dec. 13

Expedition! (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.).* "Survivors of the Ice Age," the first of a two-part look at the Lapps, Europe's far-northern nomads.

Du Pont Show of the Month (CBS, 8:30-10 p.m.). A rerun of the 1958 TV adaptation of Harvey, with Art Carney as the harebrained Elwood P. Dowd.

Wed., Dec. 14

United States Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Vincent Price and Betsy Palmer star in "Shame the Devil," a piece about the suppression of a salacious bestseller in a small-town library.

Thurs., Dec. 15

The Untouchables (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). With Sam Levene as Larry Fay, a Capone alumnus who muscled into a milk monopoly, and June Havoc as Sally Kansas, the sassy grande dame of Chicago speakeasies.

Fri., Dec. 16

Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC, 8:30-10 p.m.). "The Golden Child," an original opera by Philip Bezanson and Paul Engle about greedy miners during the California gold rush, with a somewhat gratuitous Christmas theme and an ending that suggests The Turn of the Scrooge. Color.

Sat., Dec. 17 Liberty Bowl Football Game (NBC, 12:45 to final gun). Philadelphia's bowl entry, Oregon v. Penn State. Color.

Bluebonnet Bowl Football Game (CBS, from 1:45 p.m.). From Houston, Texas v. Alabama, followed by the Green Bay-Los Angeles National Football League clash in California.

The Nation's Future (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). "Should Federal Aid to Education Include Teachers' Salaries?" G. Mennen Williams, Kennedy's newly appointed Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, takes the affirmative, with Arthur S. Flemming, Eisenhower's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, as the naysayer.

Sun., Dec. 18

Directions '61 (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). The religious series offers an adaptation of Henri Gheon's Christmas in the Market Place.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). Focusing on the present for a change, Walter Cronkite introduces "The Berliners: Life in a Gilded Cage."

The Shirley Temple Show (NBC, 7-8 p.m.). "The Black Sheep," based on the early chapters of Rudyard Kipling's autobiography, Something of Myself. Color.

General Electric Theater (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). Mickey Rooney is a particularly sulky sulky rider in "The Money Driver," a melodrama about harness racing.

Music for a Winter Night (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). "The Sounds of Christmas," the first of three holiday specials (with Mindy Carson and Florence Henderson), temporarily replaces Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years.

THEATER

Advise and Consent. Equipped with an all-but-complete set of political chessmen, the shallow but suspenseful Broadway adaptation of the bestselling novel pushes rooks and pawns about with the greatest gusto.

An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. In one of the fall's best shows, Mike and Elaine in various skits leave tooth marks on much that is fatuous, wasp stings in much that is vulgar, powder burns on a lot that is neurotic or just human.

The Hostage. Sprawling, shocking, howlingly off key, marvelously in tune, humane and hilarious, this play is as much a portrait of Playwright Brendan Behan as it is the story of an English soldier held as a hostage at I.R.A. headquarters in a Dublin brothel.

Period of Adjustment. Trading claws for Santa Claus, Broadway's master of violence, Tennessee Williams, has written a comedy-lecture on how to stay married, which is superficial, dexterous and lively.

A Taste of Honey. An episodic but unblinkingly truthful first play about a tramp of a mother and her illegitimate daughter, by a talented young Englishwoman who has the knack of using light to make soot more visible.

Irma La Douce. Transcending the ancient cliche of the golden-hearted whore, dynamic Elizabeth Seal endows a jaunty, harmless French musical with a nice tingle of iniquity and even a certain mixture of sweetness and bite.

BOOKS

Best Reading

This is the season when gift books abound in the land--all expensive, all flossy, some gimmicky, some good. Among the good: The Discovery of the World, by Albert Bettex, a handsome history of exploration; The Lithographs of Chagall, with 237 fine reproductions; Hummingbirds, by Crawford H. Greenewalt, with superb photos and readable monographs by, of all people, the president of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. For givers under no compulsion to bedazzle, there are also plain books. Among the best recent ones:

It Had Been a Mild, Delicate Night, by Tom Kaye. The woman in the London town house is a neoclassic nymph, the tramp who pursues her is clearly a satyr, and the author's story of the chase is a myth as good as a mile of realistic novels.

A Zoo in My Luggage, by Gerald Durrell. The author, a noted zoologist and brother of Lawrence Durrell, tells of following his love of animals to the Cameroons, and shows that he has his novelist brother's ability to impale the butterfly of reality on the point of a pen.

Goodbye to a River, by John Graves. The Brazos River in Texas was to be ruined by power dams, and the author, who writes well of the region's wildlife and wild living, tells of a three-week solo canoe trip he made as a farewell gesture.

Summoned by Bells, by John Betjeman. In a charming autobiography in verse, the author tells of a youth that was unremarkable except for the pain, joy and insight that go with being a poet.

Sermons and Soda Water, by John O'Hara. For years the author has written heavily and at length; these three related novellas about New York and Gibbsville, Pa. are clear, short and masterful.

The Light in the Piazza, by Elizabeth Spencer. A sensitively written novel of troubled love between an Italian shop-owner and a mentally deficient American girl; notably, the author's Americans are neither boors on tours nor snobs trying to look as if they had never heard of Akron.

The Life and Opinions of T. E. Hulme. by Alun R. Jones. Critic Hulme, a friend said, was "capable of kicking a theory as well as a man downstairs," and before he was killed in World War I at 34, this fiery British intellectual was a strong influence on such men as Eliot, Yeats and Pound.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Advise and Consent, Drury (1)*

2. Hawaii, Michener (2)

3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (4)

4. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (3)

5. Decision at Delphi, Maclnnes (9)

6. The Leopard, Di Lampedusa (5)

7. The Dean's Watch, Goudge (8)

8. Mistress of Mellyn, Holt (7)

9. The Lovely Ambition, Chase (6)

10. The Listener, Caldwell

NONFICTION

1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (1) 2. The Waste Makers, Packard (2) 3. The Snake Has All the Lines, Kerr (5) 4. The Politics of Upheaval, Schlesinger (4) 5. The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War (3) 6. Born Free, Adamson (7) 7. Baruch: The Public Years (6) 8. Vanity Fair, ed. by Amory and Bradlee 9. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (10 10. The Worlds of Chippy Patterson, Lewis

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

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