Black Orpheus (French). Winner of the 1959 Grand Prix at Cannes, this wildly beautiful adaptation of the old legend is made new and vital by an unknown cast, the brilliant direction of Marcel Camus, and a Brazilian tropical background.
The 400 Blows (French). Director Francois Truffaut has turned the story of a small boy's desperate attempt to escape from the heartsick world of his parents into a stunning metaphor for modern man trapped in the society he has fashioned.
Ben-Hur. Director William Wyler's $15 million film version of Major General Lew Wallace's Biblical bestseller has its failures, but the chariot race alone is worth the price of admission.
Third Man on the Mountain. Beautifully photographed in Switzerland, James Ramsey Ullman's Banner in the Sky has become a sort of alpine Huckleberry Finn, with James MacArthur as the main piton in a juvenile adventure.
They Came to Cordura. A flashy though convincing saddle opera with Gary Cooper as a cavalry major whose spiritual courage makes even Rita Hayworth forget his physical cowardice.
Pillow Talk. The box-office champions of the 1958-59 season, Rock Hudson and Doris Day, are teamed in an attempt to present a sort of World Series of sex, with Comic Tony Randall stealing all the bases.
The Magician (Swedish). A fantasy about a mid-19th century Mesmer and his troupe of psychological castaways is both confusing and fascinating, remains a dazzling demonstration of Writer-Director Ingmar Bergman's ingenuity.
North by Northwest. Superb Hitchcock-and-bullets, with an enduringly spotless Gary Grant and a refreshingly unzippered Eva Marie Saint, involving foreign agents who are brash enough to think they can fill Grant's tomb.
Happy Anniversary. David Niven and Mitzi Gaynor as a man and wife celebrating their 13th anniversary, recalling a night to remember.
TELEVISION
Wed., Jan. 6 CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* The U.S. missile program takes an hour-long examination. Title question: "The Space Lag: Can Democracy Compete?" Others: "Could the U.S. have launched Explorer 1 before the Russians launched Sputnik 1?" "Is a democracy badly impeded in the race for space with a dictatorship?" Thurs., Jan. 7 Special Tonight (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.).
Maureen O'Hara as Mrs. Miniver, with Cathleen Nesbitt, Leo Genn.
Fri., Jan. 8 The Art Carney Show (NBC, 8-9:30 p.m.). Carney, Celeste Holm, Orson Bean, Jessie Royce Landis, Hiram Sherman and Neva Patterson appear in The Man in the Dog Suit, a Broadway comedy from the 1958-59 season. Color.
The Twilight Zone (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). Third from the Sun, by Rod Serling,concerns two families who try to escape society on a space ship. With Fritz Weaver.
Sun., Jan 10
Johns Hopkins File 7 (ABC, 12-12:30 p.m.). The Unknown World is the planet Venus, explored in this second segment of a three-part series on astronomy. Guest commentator: John Streeter of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute.
Conquest (CBS, 5-5:30 p.m.). Taped in the Baltimore laboratories of Embryologist Dr. James Ebert, Life Before Birth follows his studies of cellular differentiation, his efforts to determine when, how and why a particular cell will begin to specialize.
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). The last days of August and the first few of September 1939 are re-created in The Week That Shook the World, i.e., the start of World War II, with 20-year-old recordings of Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid and William L. Shirer from London, Paris and Berlin.
The Jack Benny Program (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). Guest: Veteran (58) Comedian Ben Blue, whom Benny impersonates, in Blue's own thaumaturgic robes, as Chandu the Magician.
Tues., Jan. 12
Lincoln-Mercury Startime (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). An hour with Dean Martin, Nanette Fabray, Fabian, Andre Previn. Color.
The Garry Moore Show (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Guests: Actress Gertrude (A Majority of One) Berg, Singer Diahann Carroll.
THEATER
On Broadway
Five Finger Exercise. There is more than a measure of truth in Playwright Peter Shaffer's picture of English country-house life, and John Gielgud's fine direction helps to keep the uneven play (with Roland Culver and Jessica Tandy) from becoming intolerably cat-and-mousey, turns it into an engrossing production.
Fiorello! Out of a dynamic human being--New York City's Little Flower, Mayor La Guardia--and a razzle-dazzle era comes a musical whose few weaknesses cannot keep it from seeming generally delightful.
The Miracle Worker. The extraordinarily luminous performances of Anne Bancroft as Teacher Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as the young Helen Keller bring force to Playwright William Gibson's loosely constructed story and brilliance to the theater.
The Tenth Man. Playwright Paddy Chayefsky has juxtaposed chant and wisecrack, surrealism and photography, insanity and farce in his story about a young girl believed possessed by an evil spirit, and though the play fails philosophically, it remains a genuine theater piece.
Heartbreak House. Shaw's picture of Europe's pre-World War I leisure class, if wordy and sprawling, is also witty and brilliant. The cast includes Maurice Evans, Carmen Mathews, Diana Wyrtyard.
Take Me Along. A nostalgic mood musical made from O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! and made the brighter by Jackie Gleason, Walter Pidgeon, Eileen Herlie and Robert Morse.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Billy Liar, by Keith Waterhouse. The highly comic tale of a Yorkshire mortician's clerk who, Dick Whittington fashion, dreams of London, but misplaces his cat and never gets there.
Diplomat, by Charles W. Thayer. The author draws on his 20 years as a U.S. career diplomat to write an informative and entertaining handbook of his profession's hazards and trade secrets.
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 1, edited by Leonard W. Labaree. This well-prepared collection takes the sharp-witted young journalist to his 28th year, plainly shows a man seen too often only as a national monument.
Flower Shadows Behind the Curtain, translated by Vladimir Kean and Franz Kuhn. To judge from this ancient improper tale, sexual hanky-panky was much the same in 12th century China as it was in Boccaccio's 14th century Italy.
The World of James McNeill Whistler, by Horace Gregory. This first-rate biography sacrifices color for perspective, but even a toned-down Whistler is no still life.
The Wisdom of the West, by Bertrand Russell. The peppery old sage pulls off a prodigious feat of analysis, narrative and condensation by fitting a history of Western philosophy into 320 pages.
The Liberation of the Philippines, by Samuel Eliot Morison. The 13th volume in the author's naval history of World War II stems with customary skill through the summer of 1945.
The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan. A poem by Verlaine, and Rommel's wife's new shoes, are typical of the minutiae turned up in this well done, microscopic examination of Dday.
The Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad, translated by Robert Graves. The bad boy of the classicists brilliantly carries out an engaging idea: that the Iliad was intended to be a satire of gods, kings and heroes.
James Joyce, by Richard Ellmann. The best biography so far of the quirky genius; a work that describes and evaluates, but does hot try to debunk.
Best Sellers
FICTION 1. Hawaii, Michener (2)*. Advise and Consent, Drury (1) 3. The Darkness and the Dawn, Costain (3) 4. Poor No More, Ruark (6) 5. The War Lover, Hersey (7) 6. Dear and Glorious Physician, Caldwell (5) 7. Exodus, Uris (4) 8. The Devil's Advocate, West 9. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick (8) 10. The Breaking Point, Du Maurier NONF1CTION 1. Act One, Hart (1) 2. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (2) 3. This Is My God, Wouk (3) 4. The Longest Day, Ryan (6) 5. The Armada, Mattingly (4) 6. The Status Seekers, Packard (5) 7. The Joy of Music, Bernstein (7) 8. The Stolen Years, Touhy 9. For 2-c- Plain, Golden (10) 10. Triumph in the West, Bryant (9) -- Position on last week's list.
*All times E.S.T.* Position on last week's list
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