CINEMA
Love and the Frenchwoman. The French Old Wave--sophisticated samplings of sex--returns with a cineman-thology of the seven ages of woman.
The Hoodlum Priest. A crude but telling Christian cops-and-robbers story that ends with the robber condemned to the gas chamber, and guilt assigned to all.
The Absent Minded Professor. Walt Disney, who went delightfully to the dogs with 101 Dalmatians, scores again with a wacky science-fiction farce about Neddie the Nut and his fabulous flubber.
Breathless. A formless but practically flawless cubistic portrait of the Frenchman as a young punk.
The League of Gentlemen. Ex-Colonel Jack Hawkins leads a proper platoon of the Queen's Own Down-and-Outers against the outmanned forces of law and order.
Question 7. A quietly frightening portrayal of Christianity under Communism.
Other notable current movies: Ballad of a Soldier, Make Mine Mink, Circle of Deception.
TELEVISION
Wed., March 22 The United States Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* Shirley Booth stars as an uncomfortably loyal family retainer in N. Richard Slash's "Welcome Home." Thurs., March 23 Face the Nation (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).
"Should Red China Be Admitted to the U.N. Now?" Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge says no.
Britain's Lord Robert Boothby says yes.
Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.).
Last season's series of silent movies returns, hosted by Ernie Kovacs, with Douglas Fairbanks as "The Black Pirate." Fri., March 24 Eyewitness to History (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). CBS newsmen analyze one of the week's major news stories.
Sat., March 25 Third Timex All-Star Circus (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Joe E. Brown acts as TV ringmaster for the Bertram Mills Circus of London.
Sun., March 26 NBC Opera Company (NBC, 3-5 p.m.).
Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, with American Basso Giorgio Tozzi. Color.
The Great Challenge (CBS, 4-5 p.m.).
"The American Frontiers in the Sixties," discussed by Welfare Secretary Abraham Ribicoff, Financial Columnist Sylvia Porter, ex-Army Chief of Staff Maxwell D.
Taylor and M.I.T.'s Dr. James Killian Jr.
Omnibus (NBC, 5-6 p.m.). "An Omnibus of American Songs," with Edie Adams, Myron McCormick and Robert Goulet leading the sociological singspiel.
Hall of Fame (NBC, 6:30-8 p.m.).
Henry Denker's "Give Us Barabbas" stars James Daly as Jerusalem's converted thief, with Kim Hunter and Dennis King. Color.
Chevy Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). A songless Dinah Shore joins Ralph Bellamy in * All times E.S.T.
Noel Coward's Brief Encounter, moved from 1940 London to 1908 Boston for the occasion. Color.
Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The Prime Minister moves to stabilize wartime relations with India in "Be Sure You Win."
Tues., March 28
Project Twenty (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). "The Story of Will Rogers," told through film sequences, with Bob Hope as narrator.
The Way of the Cross (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). An Easter'ime repeat of a superb show, photographically retracing Jesus' road to Calvary. Color.
THEATER
On Broadway
Mary, Mary. With her criticisms confined to her witticisms, Jean Kerr (Please Don't Eat the Daisies) neatly jabs mankind and womankind with a smooth and engagingly witty comedy about the inconveniences of marriage and divorce.
Come Blow Your Horn. Some fresh and funny lines come out of the battle between a proud papa from the school of hard knocks and two sons who just want to play hooky.
Irma La Douce. A tempting tray of French delicacies, with the sweetest of them all, England's Elizabeth Seal, as a tender tart.
Advise and Consent. Allen Drury's bestselling novel about Washington makes an engrossing political melodrama. While somewhat superficial and oversimplified, at least it treats the theatrically much-neglected subject of power without cant.
Rhinoceros. Eugene lonesco provides better farce than satire in an exhilarating demonstration of how the pressures of conformity can make animals even out of the best of men.
Camelot. Although less than the sum of its attractive parts, the Lerner and Loewe musical does provide dazzling sets, engaging music and a brilliant acting job by Richard Burton.
All the Way Home. The poignant contrast of childhood and death make for one of the season's best plays.
A Taste of Honey. An episodic but effective English look at love and humor precariously alive in a shabby world.
An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Probably the funniest people on Broadway.
Off Broadway
Among the better evenings: Roots, Angry-Young-Man Arnold Wesker's honest but limited slice of lifelessness; Call Me By My Rightful Name, an interracial-triangle drama; The Connection, Jack Gel-ber's graphic re-creation of a junkie's pad; The American Dream, Edward Albee's surrealistic situation comedy; The Zoo Story, Albee's famed mano a mano between Natural and Ivy League Man, running on a double bill with Samuel Beckett's lucid monologue, Krapp's Last Tape; Hedda Gabler, another excellent production in the Fourth Street Theater's Ibsen series; In the Jungle of Cities, a mystifying but thoroughly stimulating early play by Bertolt Brecht; The Balcony, French Playwright Jean Genet's superb argument that the world is a mammoth cat house.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Seven Plays, by"Bertolt Brecht. A splendid sampling from the complex and remarkable playwright, whose works are posthumously sweeping the world's stages.
Brecht's basic theme--man selling his fellow man--was savage, but the telling of it was lusty, lyrical, joyously daft and poignantly tear-brimmed.
A Burnt-Out Case, by Graham Greene.
The despairing architect hero of Greene's latest and best novel attempts to isolate himself from worldwide fame by retreating to a tropical leper hospital. Yet what he finds is a mirror image of himself and of the civilization that he fled.
The Gouffe Case, by Joachim Maass.
The gaslit world of fin-de-siecle Paris is backdrop to an engrossing tale of murder and of a sexually ravenous temptress.
The Watchman, by Davis Grubb. The author of Night of the Hunter stirs another sulphurous caldron of horror.
Mid-Century, by John Dos Passes. This novel is a kind of documentary film of the times, done with all the skill, though less of the startling freshness, that marked the author's famed U.S.A.
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, by Albert Camus. Sometimes called "the conscience of the age," the late great Frenchman lives up to that title in these lucid and luminous essays.
In Pursuit of the English, by Doris Lessing. Candid-camera shots of London's lower depths, a world of poor but jaunty spivs, strumpets and shopgirls who can only make ends meet by cutting corners.
If Thine Eye Offend Thee, by Heinrich Schirmbeck. With the verve of early Huxley, the novelist asks if science is the mote in the eye of 20th century man.
Skyline, by Gene Fowler. A newsman's memories of the '20s, when Broadway was the Rue Regret.
Best Sellers ( SQRT previously included in TIME'S choice of Best Reading) FICTION 1. Advise and Consent, Drury (3)* 2. Hawaii, Michener (2) SQRT 3. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (1) SQRT 4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (4) SQRT 5. A Burnt-Out Case, Greene (5) SQRT 6. Pomp and Circumstance, Coward (6) SQRT 7. Midcentury, Dos Passos 8. The Key, Tanizaki (10) SQRT 9. Sermons and Soda-Water, O'Hara (7) SQRT 10. Winnie Hie Pu, Milne (8) NONFICTION SQRT 1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (1) 2. Who Killed Society? Amory (2) 3. Fate Is the Hunter, Gann (4) SQRT 4. The White Nile, Moorehead (7) 5. Japanese Inn, Statler (6) 6. The Waste Makers, Packard (3) 7. The Snake Has AH the Lines, Kerr (5) SQRT 8. Born Free, Adamson (8) 9. Profiles in Courage, Kennedy (9) 10. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell -- Position on last week's list.
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