Days of Thrills and Laughter. The third annual anthology of silent comedy, featuring, among others, Charlie Chase, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, is sure to provoke yards of yocks.
L'Avventura (in Italian). A tale of men suffering from the soul-sickness of despair, the film is a masterpiece of tedium, a parable of purgation.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Brilliant Newcomer Albert Finney battles society in the best British film since Room at the Top.
A Raisin in the Sun. Tenement realism about family life in Chicago's black belt bursts out in a writhing, vital mess.
Shadows. Earnest amateurs improvise an imperfect but powerful work of folk art in a tawdry Manhattan setting.
Love and the Frenchwoman (in French). An Old Wave cinemanthology of the seven ages of woman.
The Absent-Minded Professor. Walt Disney's wacky science-fiction farce about Neddie the Nut and his fabulous flubber.
Breathless (in French). Formless, flashing cinematic cubism, based on the existentialist tenet that life is just one damn thing after another.
TELEVISION
Wed., April 19
The United States Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* Anne Baxter stars in a drama, "The Shame of Paula Marsten," about a trauma-torn ex-Army nurse.
Thurs., April 20
Highlights of the 1961 Circus (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Arthur Godfrey demonstrates his horsemanship under the Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Big Tent.
The Ernie Kovacs Special (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Dutch Masters Cigar sponsors one of its best customers, Comedian Kovacs, in a "visual interpretation" of music from Haydn to Weill.
Fri., April 21
The Million Dollar Incident (CBS, 8:30-10 p.m.). A comedy special, with Jackie Gleason, Ed Sullivan and George Jessel as themselves, plus Actors Everett Sloane, Peter Falk, William Redfield. The incident: Jackie Gleason is kidnaped. The question: Who in the world will pay the million dollar ransom?
Sat., April 22
Major League Baseball (NBC, 1:30 p.m. to conclusion). Milwaukee Braves v, Pittsburgh Pirates.
Our American Heritage (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). Dean Jagger plays General Robert E. Lee in "Gentlemen's Decision," a dramatization of the surrender at Appomattox.
Sun., April 23
Eichmann on Trial (ABC, 4-4:30 p.m.). Highlights of the week in court.
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). "General Marshall," the story of the man behind the plan and the controversies that surrounded him in later years.
Winston Churchill--The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The Allied armies move to free France, converging to liberate Paris.
Tues., April 25
Expedition! (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). Father Bernard Hubbard, the "glacier priest," travels 2,000 miles to live among the Eskimos on King Island.
THEATER
On Broadway
A Far Country. This study of Sigmund Freud and his famous patient Elizabeth von Ritter, although somewhat broken in impact, provides an often vibrant blend--as against the usual clash--of theater and truth. The play offers a vital portrait of Freud, ably acted by Steven Hill, and a crucial delineation of Elizabeth, intelligently played by Kim Stanley.
Big Fish, Little Fish. Sometimes spotty, this honest and ably acted comedy deals with a once-promising, now dribbling minor editor who is the big fish to a school of meddlesome minnows.
Mary, Mary. Broadway's brightest, wittiest play since The Moon Is Blue is a direct reflection of its author, Jean Kerr.
The Devil's Advocate. High-purposed and high-pitched, but at the same time ill-harmonized, this play asks the largest questions raised on Broadway this season.
Irma La Douce. England's delightful singer-dancer, Elizabeth Seal, in a show that kicks its heels with Parisian verve.
Advise and Consent. A political melodrama, contrived but exciting.
Rhinoceros. lonesco's lone nonconformist (Eli Wallach) stalwartly resists joining the herd, even when his best friends (notably Zero Mostel) desert him.
Also recommended: Camelot, All the Way Home, A Taste of Honey, An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May.
Off Broadway
Brightest on the byways: Under Milk Wood, a lyrical evocation of the Welsh poet's imaginary town; Call Me By My Rightful Name, a fresh play about a triangle of misfits; The American Dream, Edward Albee's quietly angry, queerly comic comment on modern man; The Connection, a notoriously graphic portrait of some beatniks with golden arms; The Zoo Story, another Albee study, teamed with Samuel Beckett's monologue, Krapp's Last Tape; In the Jungle of Cities, far-out but fascinating early play by Bertolt Brecht; and the already-classic Brecht-Weill-Blitzstein musical, The Three-penny Opera.
On Tour
Becket. Sir Laurence Olivier is every inch a king as Henry II, having switched from the title role he played on Broadway --to Anouilh's and everyone's advantage. Detroit until April 22, Toronto April 24-29, Philadelphia May 1-6.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The New English Bible. A translation of the New Testament from the original Greek by a committee of British scholars and stylists, whose aim was to make the Scripture intelligible to moderns who find much of the 17th century King James version unintelligible. Inevitably flatter and occasionally banal, it is nevertheless smooth and lucid, casts new light on many an obscure passage.
The Odyssey. In Robert Fitzgerald's new translation into the crisp demotic argot of today, wily Odysseus sails away on the wine-dark sea to suffer the classic fate of the hero.
The French Revolution, by Georges Pernoud and Sabine Flaissier. A spirited tabloid of the Terror culled from some 50,000 eyewitness accounts. It seems that the heirs of the French Enlightenment Behaved at times like Mau Mau.
An Only Child, by Frank O'Connor. Born in a Cork slum, the author writes with cheerful charity of his pitiable boyhood and his fey, gallant mother.
The S-Man, by Mark Caine. In the clever guise of a self-help manual, this British book aims a good Swiftian kick at the cultists of success.
Ring of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell. Mijbil the Otter did many things he hadn't oughter, and most of them are hilarious.
Seven Plays, by Bertolt Brecht. Roguish laughter, a cynic's sneer, tears of compassion, and a lacerated concern with the spectacle of man selling his fellow man keep exciting company in the works of this remarkable German playwright.
A Burnt-Out Case, by Graham Greene. In leprosy, Greene has found his latest symbol for his favorite theme--the played-out soul too desiccated to feel anything except a numbing horror at the absence of feeling.
The Watchman, by Davis Grubb. A new horror story by the writer who darkened The Night of the Hunter.
Midcentury, by John Dos Passos. The U.S.A. montage of headlines, newsreels and capsule biographies is here applied to a new villain, big labor.
The Gouffe Case, by Joachim Maass. A period murder tale.
Best Sellers
( SQRT previously included in TIME s choice of Best Reading)
FICTION
The Agony and the Ecstasy,
Stone (6)*
SQRT 2. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (1)
3. Hawaii, Michener (3)
SQRT 4. A Burnt-Out Case, Greene (4)
SQRT 5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (5)
6. Advise and Consent, Drury (2)
SQRT 7. Midcentury, Dos Passos (7)
SQRT 8. China Court, Godden (9)
SQRT 9. Winnie Ille Pu, Milne (8)
10. Don't Tell Alfred, Mitford
NONFICTION SQRT 1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (1)
SQRT 2. The New English Bible (2)
SQRT 3. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (4)
4. Fate Is the Hunter, Gann (3) 5. Who Killed Society? Amory (5) SQRT 6. Skyline, Fowler (7) 7. Japanese Inn, Statler (10) SQRT 8. The White Nile, Moorehead (9) 9. The The Frog, MacIver 10. Science and Government, Snow
*Position on last week's list.
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