CINEMA Divorce--Italian Style. A murderously funny study of what happens when a marriage breaks up in Italy--it doesn't go pffft!, it goes rat-tat-tat. Marcello Mastroianni is hilarious as the husband, a tintypical Sicilian smoothie.
The Island. A Japanese movie that means to be great: the story, told without words, of the hard but beautiful life a poor farmer and his family lead on an isolated islet in Japan's Inland Sea.
Yojimbo. A Japanese movie that really is great: a work by Akira (Rashomon) Kurosawa that seems no more than a bloody and hilarious parody of a Hollywood western but develops into a satire that can stand with the beastliest and best of Bertolt Brecht.
The Gift, made for $3,123.17 by a 35-year-old commercial artist named Herbert Danska, describes with graceful obliquity a creative crisis in the life of a painter. Undoubtedly the most original U.S. movie released this year.
Guns of Darkness. Something of a sleeper: a routine south-of-the-border bit that develops into a philosophical thriller of remarkable moral insight.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes. Jean-Gabriel Albicocco's skillful and vicious version of a tale by Balzac.
The Best of Enemies. The funny story of a phony war in Ethiopia, starring David Niven and Alberto Sordi.
War Hunt. The unfunny story of a real war in Korea, starring John Saxon.
Money, Money, Money and how to make it--without getting caught. France's Jean Gabin makes a charming fiscalawag.
A Matter of WHO. Agent Terry Thomas of the World Health Organization in a cloak-and-needle WHOdunit about viruses and villains.
TELEVISION
Note: All World Series games will be broadcast by NBC. Color.
Wed., Oct. 3
Going My Way (ABC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.).* PREMIERE of a new series based on the Oscar-winning movie, with Gene Kelly as Father Bing.
Our Man Higgins (ABC, 9:30-10 p.m.). PREMIERE of a new series about an English butler who works for an American family, with My Fair Lady's Stanley Holloway.
The Eleventh Hour (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). PREMIERE of a new series anthologizing the dramatic life of an everyday psychiatrist, played by Wendell Corey.
Fri., Oct. 5
The Gallant Men (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). PREMIERE of a new series about World War II. The hero is a war correspondent (Robert McQueeney). Tonight he is advancing at Salerno.
Eyewitness (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). The top news story of the week.
Sat., Oct. 6
Football (CBS, beginning at 4:30 p.m.). Louisiana State v. Georgia Tech. Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The American Softball Association's World Series, from Stratford, Conn.
Sun., Oct. 7
Meet the Press (NBC, 6-6:30 p.m.). Guest: Richard Nixon. Color.
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). A study of the use of polls in political campaigns.
The Voice of Firestone (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Guests include Metropolitan Opera Stars Heidi Krall and Theodore Uppman.
Howard K. Smith: News and Comment (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Analysis of the week's key news events.
Mon., Oct. 8
David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Tonight's topics: the flow of cash-grabbing U.S. businessmen to the high safe life in Brazil, plus a look at the quick-marriage industry in the Great Southwest. Color.
Tues., Oct. 9
The Jack Benny Program (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Guest: Phil Silvers.
THEATER
In the opening weeks of the new season, two newcomers showed early foot.
The Affair. Adapted by Ronald Millar from the novel by C. P. Snow, this import makes crackly drama out of an intellectual scandal in Cambridge's leather-chaired common rooms, and in the process nobly evokes man's tireless quest to make justice prevail.
A Man's a Man. This Eric Bentley adaptation of a 1926 play by the late great Bertolt Brecht proves a black-biled comedy of terrors and an uncanny anticipation of brainwashing in which the hero is transformed from a simple-minded Irish laborer into a blood-bloated killer whose only self is the print on his identity card.
Of the leftovers, or putting it another way, those of durable and proven appeal, top dramatic playbilling goes to A Man for All Seasons, a play of wit and probity about a man of wit and probity, Sir Thomas More. Emlyn Williams is less effective than Paul Scofield was in the role. A Thousand Clowns lives up to its title, and Jason Robards Jr. rings merry changes on the slightly tired subject of nonconformity. In its second season, Jean Kerr's Mary, Mary remains a wisecracking play, and Barbara Bel Geddes is still in it.
A clutch of musicals caters to the best and worst of tastes. The astringent wit of Abe Burrows fuses How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and the impish energies of Robert Morse provide the explosive for an evening of delight. Multi-aptituded Zero Mostel brings his masterly clowning to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, an uproarious burlesquerie lewdly adapted from some plays of Plautus.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Letters from the Earth, by Mark Twain. A long-suppressed assault on religion that demonstrates the author's humor at its savage, scatological best.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson. The gentle, haunting tale of an old mansion and its strange inmates by one of the masters of seance-fiction.
The Shattered Glass, by Jean Ariss. A flawed but beautifully rendered novel of love between two matrimonial losers who find the courage to love and lose again.
Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, edited by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett. On horseback in the Scottish islands, the great doctor is still a monster of wit, wisdom and prejudice.
The Death of the Adversary, by Hans Keilson. Turning back to the days of Adolf Hitler, the author, a German Jew, explores the relationship between a hunted man and his persecutor in a strange, gripping novel.
The Birds of Paradise, by Paul Scott. A novel about outgrowing a British boyhood in India, where life in the waning days of Empire was hypocritical, harsh, but sometimes wildly and wonderfully mysterious.
The Blue Nile, by Alan Moorehead. Like its predecessor, The White Nile, this account of war and trade along the great river is a rich pageant of scenes and characters.
Big Mac, by Erih Kos. When a great whale is dragged into Belgrade, everyone pays obeisance to it in this hilarious spoof of conformity.
Unofficial History, by Field Marshal the Viscount Slim. A leathery British general gallantly pays tribute to the grit and gusto of friends and enemies alike in these stirring memoirs of this century's great wars.
The Inheritors, by William Golding. Neanderthals battle Homo sapiens, and the future looks only dimly promising in this gripping novel about the beginning of mankind.
The Reivers, by William Faulkner. A last, sunny romp through the usually tragic-dark acres of Yoknapatawpha County.
The Scandalous Mr. Bennett, by Richard O'Connor. A diverting chronicle of fabled New York Herald Owner James Gordon Bennett Jr., whose eccentric doings were calculated to raise both his paper's circulation and his own blood pressure, and did.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Ship of Fools, Porter (1, last week)
2. Dearly Beloved, Lindbergh (5)
3. The Prize, Wallace (6)
4. Youngblood Hawke, Wouk (2)
5. The Reivers, Faulkner (4)
6. Uhuru, Ruark (3)
7. Another Country, Baldwin (7)
8. Portrait in Brownstone, Auchincloss (9)
9. Hornblower and the Hotspur, Forester (8)
10. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (10)
NONFICTION
1. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (3)
2. The Rothschilds, Morton (1)
3. My Life in Court, Nizer (2)
4. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (4)
5. Sex and the Single Girl, Brown (5)
6. Who's in Charge Here?, Gardner (6)
7. Men and Decisions, Strauss (9)
8. One Man's Freedom, Williams (8)
9. Veeck--as in Wreck, Veeck (10) 10. The Blue Nile, Moorehead
*All times E.D.T.
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