A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare with puppets: an intricate trick executed with taste and charm by Jiri Trnka, a Czech with an imagination quite as wild as Will's.
El Cid. The Spanish Lancelot, hero of the wars against the Moors, is celebrated in the year's best superspectacle, directed by Anthony Mann.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Roger Vadim's contemporary adaptation of an 18th century erotic classic starts out as a comedy of promiscuities but winds up as a revolting examination of evil--the kind of evil in which sex is merely a means to a dead end.
One, Two, Three. A sort of Mack Sennett investigation of the situation in Berlin, conducted with a wham-bam abandon by Director Billy Wilder.
Throne of Blood. Director Akira (Rashomon) Kurosawa's grand, barbaric Japanization of Macbeth is probably the most original and vital attempt ever made to translate Shakespeare to the screen.
The Five-Day Lover. A hilarious bou-Dior farce in a sly French style that mingles lowlife and haute couture, but at the end Director Philippe de Broca does not find lovers in the closets--he finds skeletons.
A Summer to Remember. A Soviet film whose reels contain honest celluloid--the fresh, warm, funny story of a little boy's life with father in Russia today--instead of the usual party line.
The Hustler. A morality play in a poolroom, brilliantly directed by Robert Rossen, vigorously played by Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, Jackie Gleason.
West Side Story. This big, slick cine-musical, like the Broadway show it is based on, decorates its hoods with halos and its cops with badges of dishonor, but its dances still seem (mostly) fresh and its Romeo and Juliet story still seems (mostly) sweet.
TELEVISION
Wed., Jan. 3 Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* "Window on the West," a documentary film describing the operation of Radio Free Europe.
Thurs., Jan. 4
Purex Special for Women (NBC, 3-4 p.m.). Why Americans spend billions of dollars trying to overcome loneliness.
Accent on 1961 (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). The moods of Americans as they reacted to the news events of the year, enlivened by three musical satires from Manhattan's Upstairs at the Downstairs.
CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). A detailed look at East Germany's showcase city, Rostock, filmed in homes, factories, schools and churches during November and December, including an interview with Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht.
Fri., Jan. 5
Projection '62 (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Eleven foreign and domestic correspondents forecast world events for 1962.
Sun., Jan. 7
Meet the Professor (ABC, 2:30-3 p.m.). Premiere. An outstanding professor discussing his college, his community and his philosophy of teaching. Today's guest: Dr. Huston Smith from M.I.T.
Sunday Sports Spectacular (CBS, 2:30-4 p.m.). Some 75 broncobusters compete for $57,000 prize money in the national rodeo championships in Dallas.
Wide World of Sports (ABC, 3:30 p.m. to conclusion). American Football League's Eastern All-Stars v. Western All-Stars.
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). Documentary film on the "Siege at Malta" during World War II.
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). An all-Swedish cast in Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates, filmed in Holland and Sweden. First of two parts. Color.
DuPont Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Home movies of Hollywood stars at work and play from 1927 to the present, filmed by Comedian Ken Murray. Stars include Maurice Chevalier, Tyrone Power, Leslie Howard, Jayne Mansfield, Will Rogers and Pat Boone.
Mon., Jan. 8
Expedition (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). The organized efforts to discover what makes sharks attack and how to deter them.
THEATER
On Broadway
A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt. Intelligence burns with a cool, gemlike flame in this play about private conscience versus public duty. Actor Paul Scofield is Sir Thomas More incarnate.
Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, casts the dialogue between God and Man in the folksy accents of back-fence neighborliness, but Fredric March and Douglas Campbell keep the sparks flying heavenward.
The Complaisant Lover, by Graham Greene, is a light but far from frivolous treatment of love, marriage and adultery.
Write Me a Murder, by Frederick Knott. In this thriller, a murderer writes a letter-perfect crime and almost commits it, but justice beats out literature by a noose.
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a musicomedy with a mind (Author-Director Abe Burrows). But its body and soul is Actor Robert Morse, who polishes off everybody but his grandmother in a great, grinning rush to the top of the corporate heap.
A Shot in the Dark, adapted by Harry Kurnitz from a Paris hit, is a bed-and-courtroom farce in which Julie Harris raises laughs, eyebrows and an occasional lump in the throat.
The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter, mingles brooding poetry with eruptive passion as it unfolds a strange, shifting relationship between two brothers and a scrofulous tramp.
Off Broadway 2 by Saroyan proves again that Saroyan cafes, like Scott Fitzgerald parties, have a magic and a logic that is out of this world. As a foolosophical waiter, Actor Milt Kamen deserves a citation from the waiters' union.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Papers of Alexander Hamilton
(Volumes I & II), edited by Harold C.
Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke. These first volumes of a contemplated 20-volume collection carry Hamilton to the age of 27, show him to have been something more than a gelid autocrat; in fact, his pen is by turns so sharp, blunt or passionate that whole sections of these books read like a lively epistolary novel.
The Burning Brand and The House on the Hill, both by Cesare Pavese. Respectively, a somber private journal and a brief, astringent novel of World War II by an Italian writer worthy of considerable respect. For reasons made clear in the journal, Pavese committed suicide in 1950.
But Not in Shame, by John Toland. A historian's painstaking account of the first six disastrous months of the war in the Pacific makes a dramatic documentary.
The Letters of Beethoven, edited by Emily Anderson. Worshipers trying to comprehend the mind that invented the soaring music are almost certain to be puzzled by these three volumes; they show Beethoven to have been petty, sour and quarrelsome in his private dealings.
Lawrence of Arabia: The Man and the Motive, by Anthony Nutting. Britain's quirky compost of desert hero, scholar and aircraftman, who has provided plenty of controversial copy for novelists, play wrights, biographers and muckrakers, is dissected again in an absorbing analysis by Britain's onetime Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
Assembly, by John O'Hara. The best ear in the business listens in on modern America with 26 short stories, some of which rank high among O'Hara's upper-middle classics.
The Super-Americans, by John Bainbridge. Reporter Bainbridge traveled to Texas and with malice aforethought reported exactly what he found there. The result is high social satire, and a welcome capital gain for the reader.
Best Best FICTION
1. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (1, last week)
2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (2)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (3)
4. Spirit Lake, Kantor (7)
5. Little Me, Dennis (5)
6. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (4)
7. Daughter of Silence, West (8)
8. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (6)
9. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (10)
10. The Incredible Journey, Burnford
NONFICTION 1. My Life in Court, Nizer (1)
2. The Making of the President 1960, White (2)
3. Living Free, Adamson (7)
4. The New English Bible (8)
5. The Coming Fury, Catton (9)
6. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (3)
7. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (5)
8. I Should Have Kissed Her More, King (6)
9. Citizen Hearst, Swanberg (4) 10. PT 109, Donovan
* All times E.S.T.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.