CINEMA

Only Two Can Play. Peter Sellers plays a wan little Welsh librarian who decides he would rather study a blonde than bury his nose in a book.

Viridiana. Made in Spain on Franco's money but banned in Spain by Franco's decree, this peculiar and powerful film by Luis Bunuel predicts in parable the next Spanish revolution and contains an orphic orgy of Goyesque genius.

Sweet Bird of Youth. Tennessee Williams' Bird was an artistic turkey on Broadway, but as directed by Richard Brooks it makes a noisy and sometimes brilliant peacock of a picture. Geraldine Page as an aging cinemama blazons a memorable skidmark on the go-away-and-don't-comeback trail.

Through a Glass Darkly. Sweden's icily intelligent Ingmar Bergman infuses unexpected warmth of feeling into a darkly metaphysical drama that depicts the birth of God in the form of an enormous spider.

Last Year at Marienbad. A cinenigma worked out by two Frenchmen, Scenarist Alain Robbe-Grillet and Director Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour), that has become the intellectual sensation of the year in films.

The Lower Depths. Akira Kurosawa's Japanization of the classic proletarian comedy by Maxim Gorky boils with demonic energy and rocks with large, yea-saying laughter.

The Night. The fashionable ailment of anxiety is skillfully anatomized by Italy's Michelangelo (L'Avventura) Antonioni.

Lover Come Back. Animadversions on advertising, wittily written by Stanley Shapiro and blandly recited by Doris Day and Rock Hudson.

A View from the Bridge. Arthur Miller's attempt to find Greek tragedy in cold-water Flatbush errs in concept but succeeds in details.

One, Two, Three. Billy Wilder's rough-house comedy describes a Berlin interlude in the life of a hardhearted soft-drink salesman (James Cagney) before the Wall put an end to monkey business as usual.

TELEVISION

Wed., April 11 Howard K. Smith (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).* Comment on the week's news events.

Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Ron Cochran narrates a documentary on modern developments in cancer therapy.

David Brinkley (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The Washington, D.C. monument dilemma and the Baird puppets in India. Color.

Thurs., April 12 CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger is interviewed by Correspondent Eric Sevareid on this study of birth control and the law.

Fri., April 13 Young People's Concert (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Leonard Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in a concert featuring youthful soloists.

Sun., April 15 Directions '62 (ABC, 3-3:30 p.m.). The story of the Jewish quest for religious freedom, symbolized in the Exodus from Egypt and commemorated in the Passover. The Open Door (CBS, 10-11 a.m.). Tenor Jan Peerce, accompanied by Alfredo Antonini and the CBS Orchestra, sings songs marking the observance of Passover. Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC, 6-7:30 p.m.). Kim Hunter, James Daly and Dennis King in a play based on the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate and the freeing of Barabbas, the thief. Repeat. Color. The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). The dissolution of the French empire in Southeast Asia, brought on by the defeat of the French by Communist forces in Dienbienphu. Project 20 (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). The last days of Christ, leading up to the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, are told through close-ups of paintings. Color. Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Bob Cummings, Audrey Meadows star in a comedy about a New Orleans confidence man who sets out to bilk a lively widow. Jazz musical score improvised by Gerry Mulligan. Color.

Tues., April 17 Rainbow of Stars (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Robert Goulet hosts a variety show from Manhattan's Rockefeller Center, with Nancy Walker, Dick Button, Carol Lawrence, Al Hirt, Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. Close-Up (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). A reappraisal of imperialism on the Indian subcontinent, filmed in Lahore, written and narrated by Novelist John Masters.

THEATER On Broadway The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. On a Mexican veranda, four desperate people break out of the cycle of self-concern to achieve self-transcendence. Williams' best play since A Streetcar Named Desire.

Ross, by Terence Rattigan. The puzzle of T. E. Lawrence is pieced together in fascinating, though debatable, fashion in this play. John Mills portrays the hero with lacerating honesty.

A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt, might have drawn its theme from Shakespeare's "Every subject's duty is the king's, but every subject's soul is his own." Playing Sir Thomas More, Paul Scofield is flawless.

Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, makes God and man all too human, but Fredric March as God and Douglas Campbell as Gideon occasionally approach the sublime.

A Shot in the Dark, adapted from a Paris hit, is tres tres sleek and sassy, with Julie Harris starring as a sleep-around maid.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a musical with a witty mind (Director-Librettist Abe Burrows) and a hero of exuberant guile (Robert Morse) whose rise from window cleaning to executive seat polishing is a joy to behold.

Off Broadway Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, by Arthur Kopit, turns the battle of the sexes into a surrealistic rout. Among the Venus flytraps, Barbara Harris glistens as the most hilariously voracious sexling since Lolita.

Brecht on Brecht generates dramatic excitement from a revue-styled montage of the songs, poems, scenes, and aphorisms of a 20th century master of theater.

BOOKS Best Reading Ship of Fools, by Katherine Anne Porter. The ship is a German passenger-freighter that steams from Veracruz to Bremerhaven in 1931; the allegory is that this and all passages of the world's voyage are dismal; the art is consummate.

In Parenthesis, by David Jones. The author, a painter who sometimes turns to prose and poetry, uses an unorthodox but effective amalgam of both in this bitter novel about the total irony of war--in this case, World War I.

Scott Fitzgerald, by Andrew Turnbull. A sensitive and exhaustive biography of the Twenties' literary golden boy, who was undone in the '30s by alcohol and neglect, and died at 44 in the middle of a novel that might well have provided him with his comeback.

A Long and Happy Life, by Reynolds Price. This uncommonly good first novel tells of a Carolina country girl coming to womanhood, and makes "Should she or shouldn't she?" the agonizing debate that it usually is in life, and so rarely is in literature.

The Blood of the Lamb, by Peter De Vries. The humorist abandons gaiety, if not humor; in this bitter and wholly serious novel of a man's loss of faith, life is seen to be a cruel joke.

Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories, by John Updike. Another set of short passages by one of the most brilliant young stylists in the U.S., who should be setting his sights higher.

A Signal Victory, by David Stacton. A cool, clear, fictional account of the Mayan collapse before the Spanish conquest.

The Rothschilds, by Frederic Morton. A family biography of the most fabulous banking dynasty of Europe that rose from the ghetto to rival royalty.

Best Sellers FICTION 1. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (1, last week) 2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (2) 3. The Fox in the Attic, Hughes (4) 4. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (3) 5. Devil Water, Seton 6. The Bull from the Sea, Renault (5) 7. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (6) 8. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (10) 9. Twilight of Honor, Dewlen 10. Daughter of Silence, West (8)

NONFICTION 1. Calories Don't Count, Taller (2) 2. My Life in Court, Nizer (1) 3. The Guns of August, Tuchman (3) 4. The Rothschilds, Morton (4) 5. The Last Plantagenets, Costain (5) 6. CIA: The Inside Story, Tully (6) 7. The Making of the President 1960, White (7) 8. The Executive Coloring Book 9. The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations, Ward 10. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (9)

* All times E.S.T.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.