Kanal (in Polish). A Dantesque catalogue of the psychological and physical tortures of a company of men and women trapped in Warsaw's sewers during the abortive 1944 uprising against the Nazis.
The Bridge (in German). The tragedy of seven teen-age German boys thrown into the front lines as human sandbags two days before the end of World War II.
Mein Kampf. A searing documentary of the rise and fall of Hitler's Germany that catalogues in gruesome detail man's organized inhumanity to man. Culled from newspapers, Nazi propaganda pictures, Wehrmacht battle films and secret police footage.
Two Women (in Italian). Life and death, hope and despair in World War II Italy, ably played by Sophia Loren and Jean-Paul Belmondo.
La Dolce Vita (in Italian). A vivid allegory of a modern Roman saturnalia.
L'Avventura (in Italian). A less sensational, slow-moving but masterly look at Italy's bored and depraved well-to-do.
TELEVISION
Thurs., May 25
Summer Sports Spectacular (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* Bud Palmer explains why soccer draws cheers from Europeans, and Brazil's highly rated Bangu team plays West Germany's Karlsruhe squad.
Fri., May 26
The Twilight Zone (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.) wins the week's cigar for clever titling with "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"
Eyewitness to History (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). One of the week's major news stories reported by network cameramen and narrated by Walter Cronkite.
Sat., May 27 ABC's Wide World of Sports (5-7 p.m.). Time trials for Indianapolis' 500-mile Memorial Day race.
The Nation's Future (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). "Should NATO Be a Nuclear Pow er?" Henry (The Necessity for Choice) Kissinger takes the affirmative, and former Army missile chief, Major General John B. Medaris, says no.
Major League Baseball (NBC, 2:30 p.m. to conclusion). Dodgers v. Braves.
Only in non-major league areas.
Sun., May 28 Directions '61 (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). An experimental blending of light patterns and symphonic music, based on a scriptural theme, by Composer Ralph Hermann.
Eichmann on Trial (ABC, 4-4:30 p.m.).
Reporters Bill Shadel, Quincy Howe, Mar vin Levin.
Issues and Answers (ABC, 4:30-5 p.m.). Guest and answer man is Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles.
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). Paris in the '20s -- pictures and recollections of the now famous, including James Joyce and Pablo Picasso.
Winston Churchill -- The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Tying the Knot; the final campaign in Germany. Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery offers his recollections.
Tues., May 30
Expedition! (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). Last May's ascent by a European expedition of Mount Dhaulagiri, then the world's highest unclimbed peak (26,795 ft.).
THEATER
On Broadway
Carnival! The vintage movie Lili, with a touch of Liliom, makes a musical that is often worthy of its exclamation mark. Anna Maria Alberghetti is the waif and Pierre Olaf a superb clown.
Becket. Arthur Kennedy as the Archbishop and Sir Laurence Olivier now playing a formidable Henry II.
A Far Country. The early years of Freud are presented in an imperfect but successful marriage of document and drama. With Steven Hill and Kim Stanley, both excellent.
Big Fish, Little Fish. A has-been editor is surrounded by never-weres in this honest but sometimes labored comedy about the sour smell of false success.
Mary, Mary. Playwright Jean Kerr jabs deftly but gently at a great many contemporary targets, including female humorists too witty for their own good.
The Devil's Advocate. An effective, high-purposed but flawed adaptation of the Morris L. West novel: Leo Genn is the emotionless monsignor who, in his investigation of an unorthodox candidate for sainthood (Edward Mulhare), is enmeshed in humanity.
Irma La Douce. Elizabeth Seal is the piquant British star of this slight, jaunty French comedy about a warmhearted prostitute.
All the Way Home. This adaptation of James Agee's Pulitzer Prize novel about his Tennessee boyhood is sometimes less than a play but always vividly playable.
Off Broadway
The Blacks. A white man's savage and provocative attempt, by French Playwright Jean Genet, to depict Negroes' ideas of whites and white men's views of these ideas.
Other back-alley art worth the trip: Under Milk Wood, a fresh retelling of life in the village Dylan Thomas waggishly named Llareggub; The American Dream, Edward Albee's dissection of modern man; In the Jungle of Cities, Bertolt Brecht's intriguing early effort: Hedda Gabler, an excellent production of the Ibsen classic: The Connection, a relentlessly realistic study of narcotics and nihilists; and the durable Brecht-Weill classic, The Threepenny Opera.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, by George Kennan. An illuminating and gracefully written account of the relations between Russia and the West, 1917 to 1945. The Kennan line, beguilingly argued but far from dangerproof, is that the West 1) may count on relative Kremlin restraint in future policy, and 2) should be less moralistic and dogmatic itself.
The Morning and the Evening, by
Joan Williams, and The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy. Two Southern novelists write about life in a small Mississippi town and in the big city of New Orleans as though they had created it, and continue the literary phenomenon of Southern authors who publish work of remarkable quality the first time out.
The Age of Reason, by Harold Nicolson. A lively account of 18th century despots and philosophs that cleverly undermines its title by emphasizing the eccentric, the ironic and the downright perverse.
The Brothers M, by Tom Stacey. A deeply disturbing first novel about an oddly matched pair of students, McNair (white) and Mukasa (black), who are known at Oxford as "the brothers" until the color line and an African journey turn them into Cain and Abel.
Phaedra and Figaro, translated respectively by Robert Lowell and Jacques Barzun. The fiery Racine tragedy and the bubbling Beaumarchais comedy are superbly restored to the modern reader.
Some People, Places, and Things That Will Not Appear in My Next Novel, by John Cheever. An excursion into the morally split-level world of wry, self-questioning success and tepidly rebellious domesticity.
Lanterns and Lances, by James Thurber. Tongue twisters, riddles, puns, palindromes and the war between the sexes, acrobatically presented by that old master of reverse English: Semaj Rebruht.
Snake Man, by Alan Wykes. More remarkable than any of the rare snakes he has captured is C. J. P. Ionides, a legendary eccentric who displays all the instincts of the aristocrat and no trace of the gentleman.
The Proverb and Other Stories, by Marcel Ayme. In the hands of this artful French writer, pictures become edible, people lapse into "temporary death," fathers take their sons' exams, and art itself becomes the science of the impossible.
Best Sellers ( SQRT previously included in TIME'S choice of Best Reading)
FICTION
1. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (1)* SQRT 2. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (3) 3. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (2) SQRT 4. A Burnt-Out Case, Greene (4) 5. Advise and Consent, Drury (9) SQRT 6. Midcentury, Dos Passos (5) SQRT 7. Winnie Ille Pu, Milne (6) 8. China Court, Godden (8) 9. Hawaii, Michener (7) SQRT 10. Pomp and Circumstance, Coward NONFICTION SQRT 1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (1) SQRT 2. The New English Bible (3) SQRT 3. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (2) 4. My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, Parks (4) 5. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (5) SQRT 6. Skyline, Fowler (8) 7. Fate Is the Hunter, Gann (6) 8. The City in History, Mumford (7) 9. Reality in Advertising, Reeves 10. Who Killed Society? Amory (10)
*AH times are E.D.T. *Position on last week's list.
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