The Night. Marriage without love and life without meaning are examined with talent, intelligence and despair by Michelangelo Antonioni (L'Avventura), whose text might be taken from St. Paul: "For as in Adam all die . . ."
Victim. An entertaining but tendentious thriller that illustrates a shocking statistic: in nine out of ten cases of blackmail in Britain, the victim is a homosexual. Not for the kiddies.
Sail a Crooked Ship. The last movie made by the late Ernie Kovacs is a sort of shaggy seadog story in which Comedian Kovacs plays "a unsussessful crinimal" with a big cigar and a tiny brain.
Lover Come Back. Stanley Shapiro, one of Hollywood's more competent make-'em-laugh-till-they-gag men, has served up a grand old turkey of a plot-the mistaken-identity bit-and has stuffed it with plenty of giggles. Dessert: a couple of cream puffs called Rock Hudson and Doris Day.
Light in the Piazza. Question: Should a wealthy American mother (Olivia de Havilland) permit her beautiful daughter (Yvette Mimieux) to marry a charming young Italian (George Hamilton) who does not realize that the daughter is mentally retarded? Answer: Florence in Metrocolor is worth seeing anyway.
Tender Is the Night. Jason Robards Jr. portrays the triple-distilled spirit of the '20s in a competent film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's story about a psychiatrist who lies down on the couch with his favorite patient.
A View from the Bridge. Arthur Miller's attempt to find Greek tragedy in cold-water Flatbush errs in concept but succeeds in details. Raf Vallone is memorable as a stevedore with an offbeat Oedipus complex.
One, Two, Three. Director Billy Wilder's Coca-Colonial comedy of bad manners is set in Berlin and relentlessly maintains the pace that refreshes.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. The best puppet picture ever made: a feature-length version of Shakespeare's play put together by Czechoslovakia's Jiri Trnka.
Murder, She Said. Margaret Rutherford, the British comedienne, comes on strong as a lady gumshoe in this adaptation of an Agatha Christie chiller.
TELEVISION
Wed., March 7
Howard K. Smith--News and Comment (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).* report on the week's news.
The Bob Newhart Show (NBC, 10:30 p.m.). Sketches and by a masterly comedian.
Thurs., March 8
CBS Reports (CBS, 10-10:30 The Arizona Senator himself appears "The Phenomenon of Barry Goldwater."
Fri., March 9
Eyewitness to History (CBS, p.m.). The week's top news event.
Chet Huntley Reporting (NBC, 11 p.m.). All about Jacqueline scheduled trip to India and Pakistan. (CBS' Eyewitness and NBC's Huntley Reporting are public service programs, and in the public interest the networks have scheduled them at exactly the same time, apparently on the old combat theory of an eye for an eye, a western for a western, blood for blood, etc.--with the result no viewer can see both.)
Sat., March 10
Thresholds for Tomorrow (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Last of three programs on new advances in scientific research.
Sun., March 11
Lamp Unto My Feet (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.). Britain's Stanley Holloway reads from Poet Laureate John Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy.
Directions '62 (ABC, 3-3:30 p.m.). The Peloquin Chorale sings Lenten music from Mozart, Poulenc, Faure and Kodaly.
Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic (CBS, 5-6:30 p.m.). A presentation and analysis of Carmen, illustrating how music is used to enhance dramatic characterization.
Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Rodeo, from Tucson, Ariz.
The Jack Benny Program (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Cheap Jack impersonates Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury. Zeppelin-sized Announcer Don Wilson plays Benjamin Franklin. Cirrus-voiced Dennis Day is Aaron Burr.
Mon., March 12
Expedition (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). A trip to the walled Nigerian city of Kano.
Tues., March 13
The Land (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). The U.S. agricultural scene.
THEATER
On Broadway
The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. In what may be his wisest play, the author gathers four of life's castaways on a Mexican veranda and probes their violated hearts.
Ross, by Terence Rattigan, presents an absorbing theory of T. E. Lawrence as a man both raised and racked by his own will. John Mills plays the hero with anguish and skill.
A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt, throws its varicolored light on the theme of public duty v. private conscience. As Sir Thomas More, British Actor Paul Scofield is faultless.
Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, treats the relationship of God and man with more humor than awe, but the superb acting of Fredric March and Douglas Campbell supplies the necessary power and the glory.
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is the secret that Actor Bobby Morse shares with the season's most appreciative audiences, as he clambers deceitfully and nimbly up the corporate slag heap.
Among Broadway's long-run tenants, Mary, Mary incites full houses to laugh along with Playwright Jean Kerr; Camelot's Round Table is becoming as durable as King Arthur's--and there is always the grande dame of Manhattan's musicals, My Fair Lady.
Off Broadway
Bret on Brecht is an exciting peek at the poems, letters, scenes and songs in the treasure-trove of a 20th century master of theater. A splendid company of six perched on stools gives magic to this revue-styled evening.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Rothschilds, by Frederic Morton.
The absorbing story of Europe's fabulous dynasty, which rose from Frankfurt's ghetto to become the rivals of royalty and the arbiters of art.
The Fox in the Attic, by Richard Hughes. A trenchant novel about Europe's sickness between two World Wars, contrasting a victorious England in need of no new God with a defeated Germany in search of the sinister old warrior-deities.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey. Set inside a mental hospital, this brilliant first novel is a roaring protest against middlebrow society's rules.
The Death of Ahasuerus, by Paer Lagerkvist. The Wandering Jew as a symbol of salvation by unfaith-by a Nobel prize-winning novelist who once described himself as "a believer without a belief."
The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman. The fateful first month of World War I as a drama in which every actor had rehearsed his part for years and yet turned it into a shambles.
The Quarry, by Friedrich Duerrenmatt. A sick old detective trapped in a sanitarium run by an archsadist-each of them the other's quarry-provides the author with a new set of grotesque mouthpieces for his macabre view of life.
Writers on the Left, by Daniel Aaron.
Some of the best writers in the U.S. fell for or got bullied into Communism during the Degression '30s; a look at what they said and wrote, how they fellow-traveled through ideology to disillusionment.
The End of the Battle, by Evelyn Waugh. Part three of a trilogy about Britain in Waughtime, how an upper-class way of living and dying turned grey when the Russians became Britain's allies.
Best Sellers FICTION 1. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (1, last week) 2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (2)
3. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (7)
4. Captain Newman, M.D., Rosten (4)
5. Daughter of Silence, West (6)
6. The Fox in the Attic, Hughes
7. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (5)
8. The Ivy Tree, Stewart (8)
9. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (3) 10. The Bull from the Sea, Renault
NONFICTION 1. My Life in Court, Nizer (1)
2. Calories Don't Count, Taller (2)
3. The Guns of August, Tuchman (4)
4. The Making of the President 1960, White (3)
5. The Last of the Plantagenets, Costain (7)
6. CIA: The Inside Story, Tully (8)
7. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (6)
8. Living Free, Adamson (10)
9. My Saber Is Bent, Paar (5)
10. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (9)
*All times E.S.T.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.