The Secret Ways. Richard Widmark on the run from Communist baddies produces a film soaked with gunplay, torture, capture and escape, escape and capture, cliff-hanging and ledge crawling.
On the Double. The dull script almost throttles the grand old gitgatgittle out of its star, but for all its shortcomings the movie still has Danny Kaye.
Ashes and Diamonds (in Polish). Set in Poland in the bitter days just after the German surrender in World War II, this film powerfully states its theme that a farewell to arms is the most difficult of all partings.
Kanal (in Polish). Men and women trapped in Warsaw's sewers during the abortive uprising against the Nazis are put through a Dantesque catalogue of psychological and physical tortures.
The Bridge (in German). Seven German teen-agers go eagerly to battle in the last days of World War II; their awakening is powerful if predictable cinema.
Mein Kampf. Newsreels, German propaganda films and secret police footage have yielded a definitive compilation of the Third Reich's horrors.
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 contemporary Italy's bored and depraved well-to-do.
TELEVISION
Wed., May 31
United States Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* Eddie Albert in a drip-dry drama, Famous, in which he plays a Broadway composer determined to keep his bumptious children out of show business.
Thurs., June 1
Summer Sports Spectacular (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Sky divers are people who think it is important to look graceful as you fall out of an airplane; Sportscaster Bud Palmer tells all about them, and the lecture is vividly illustrated.
Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Emil Jannings is a jealous trapeze artist in the German film, Variety (1925).
Fri., June 2
J.F.K. in Paris (NBC, 8-8:30 p.m.). President Kennedy's pre-Vienna meeting with President de Gaulle, covered by network correspondents and cameramen
The Twilight Zone (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver co-star in The Obsolete Man, the story of a librarian in a state where books are outlawed.
Sat., June 3
Triple Crown Race (CBS, 4:30-5 p.m.). They're off in the Belmont Stakes.
Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-7 p.m.). Jack Kramer narrates as his professional tennis menagerie, including Champ Pancho Gonzales and Runner-Up Andres Gimeno, plays in Mexico City.
Sun., June 4
Issues and Answers (ABC, 4:30-5 p.m.). Senators Barry Goldwater and Jacob Javits, conservative and liberal poles of the G.O.P., discuss the party's future.
Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). Rommel: a rebroadcast of a documentary following the German general from his sweep across North Africa to his suicide.
Shirley Temple Show (NBC, 7-8 p.m.). The House of the Seven Gables, with Actress Temple and Agnes Moorehead. Color.
Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Mort Sahl is a guest.
Winston Churchill--The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The end of the war in Europe.
Tues., June 6
Expedition! (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). "Conquest of Mount Dhaulagiri," Part 2. The assault on a Himalayan peak that had defeated seven expeditions in the past decade.
THEATER
On Broadway
Carnival! This remake of the Leslie Caron film Lili is beguiling largely because of Pierre Olaf, a superb clown who plays the puppeteer's assistant, and Singer Anna Maria Alberghetti, who is a winning waif.
A Far Country. Document and drama blend smoothly but not spectacularly in this account of Freud's early years; Kim Stanley's superb acting as the psychoanalyst's troublesome patient saves the show.
Big Fish, Little Fish. A has-been editor is surrounded by never-weres in this sometimes labored comedy about the sour smell of success.
Mary, Mary. The clack of verbal ping-pong is exhilarating.
All the Way Home. The late James Agee's novel becomes a fine, if flawed play that offers more pure specie and less stage money than any other this season.
Off Broadway
The Blacks. Jean Genet finds avant-garde techniques in the ritualistic origins of the theater, and bedazzles the audience with them in this kaleidoscopic, mocking allegory of hatred between white and Negro.
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; 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
The Complete Poems of Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven, and Poems by George Seferis, translated by Rex Warner. The two finest Greek poets of the 20th century, in evocative translations that capture each writer's cruel sense of the past and timeless sense of man's fate.
Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, by George Kennan. A graceful, informative account of the relations between Russia and the West, 1917-1945. The Kennan line, beguiling but hazardous, is that the West 1) may count on future Kremlin restraint; 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 both, 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 philosophers that cleverly undermines its title by emphasizing the eccentric, the ironic and the perverse.
The Brothers M, by Tom Stacey. A disturbing novel about an oddly matched pair of students, McNair (white) and Mukasa (black), and an African journey that turns them into Cain and Abel.
Phaedra and Figaro, translated respectively by Robert Lowell and Jacques Barzun. The full-bodied red wine of Racine and the light, frivolous white of Beaumarchais, distinctively poured for discriminating palates.
Some People, Places, and Things That Will Not Appear in My Next Novel, by John Cheever. The author is the laureate of the self-questioning upper middle class that wonders why it has all the good things in life except the good life.
Lanterns and Lances, by James Thurber. The daring old man on the verbal trapeze does amusing literary acrobatics with puns, palindromes, and the hot and cold running war between the sexes.
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 (2)
SQRT 3. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (3)
SQRT 4. A Burnt-Out Case, Greene (4)
SQRT 5. Midcentury, Dos Passos (6)
6. Advise and Consent, Drury (5)
SQRT 7. Winnie Ille Pu, Milne (7)
8. Hawaii, Michener (9)
9. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins
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)
3. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (5)
SQRT 4. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (3)
5. My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, Parks (4)
6. Reality in Advertising, Reeves (9)
7. Fate Is the Hunter, Gann (7)
SQRT 8. Skyline, Fowler (6)
9. The City in History, Mumford (8)
10. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Hauser
*All times are E.D.T.
*Position on last week's list.
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