CINEMA

Billy Budd. Herman Melville's didactic tale has been transformed into a vivid, frightening, deeply affecting film, and for this the credit belongs principally to Britain's Peter Ustinov, who directed the picture, helped write the script, and plays one of the leading roles.

The Manchurian Candidate. In this self-consciously "different" movie about a posthypnotic political assassination, one G.I.'s brains are washed, tumble-dried and dyed Red in a Chinese P.W. camp, and he ends up stalking a U.S. presidential candidate with murderous intent. Frank Sinatra is a satisfactory U.S. Army officer and Laurence Harvey is glumly fascinating as the hypnotized killer.

Phaedra. Melina Mercouri purrs, snarls and shrieks impressively in this modern-day version of an old Greek myth. Raf Vallone, as her ship-tycoon husband is healthily Hellenic in a role with obvious overtones of Onassisism. Only Tony Perkins seems somewhat less than believable as Vallone's stepson.

The Longest Day. General Zanuck's war games are played off like cops and robbers. Day is three hours long, and while it is never boring, it is basically an episodic documentary.

Long Day's Journey into Night. Director Sidney Lumet and a generally effective cast (Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards Jr., Dean Stockwell) have translated the truest and the greatest of Eugene O'Neill's plays into one of the year's finest films.

Barabbas. Thanks principally to the religious imagination of Scriptwriter Christopher Fry, this movie version of Paer Lagerkvist's novel is something better than the sort of Bible babble the movies usually purvey. It is a searching and sometimes illuminating interpretation of the character of the thief who lived that Christ might die.

Divorce--Italian Style. This wickedly hilarious lesson in how to break up a marriage in divorceless Italy stars Marcello Mastroianni as a Sicilian smoothie who sheds his unwanted wife in the only way the law seems to allow: he provides her with a lover, catches them together, shoots her dead. But then . . .

TELEVISION

Wed., Nov. 14

Discovery '62 (ABC, 4:30-4:55 p.m.).* A nature study, a visit with Pianist Leonid Hambro and a trip to Barcelona, thoughtfully presented with children in mind.

Thurs., Nov. 15

Alcoa Premiere (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Richard Conte in a drama of blindness and family passions.

Fri., Nov. 16

Jack Paar Program (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Jonathan Winters, Gisele MacKenzie, Hans Conried and Bette Davis are guests.

Sat., Nov. 17

Exploring (NBC, 12:30-1:30 p.m.). Chet Huntley tells the legend of Icarus, the De Pasquale string quartet plays, puppets talk about numbers, and an owl flies, to demonstrate principles of flight: for children 5-11.

The Defenders (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A man seeks vengeance for the death of his wife and son in a Nazi concentration camp; featuring Ludwig Donath.

Sun., Nov. 18

Lamp Unto My Feet (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.). Brief Dynasty, a ballet by John Butler with music by Robert Starer, tells in dance of the Biblical struggle between Saul and David.

Look Up and Live (CBS, 10:30-11 a.m.). A study of Albert Einstein's personal philosophy.

Opera (NBC, 2:30-4:30 p.m.). Season debut of the well-regarded NBC Opera Company in Boris Godunov, starring Giorgio Tozzi.

Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Margaret Leighton and Anthony Quinn demonstrate their theatrical genius by reading from phone books.

Howard K. Smith: News and Comment (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Comment on the week's news.

Mon., Nov. 19

David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10-10:30 p.m.). David examines discrimination against the 75,000 West Indians, Asians and Africans who live in Birmingham, England.

Tues., Nov. 20

Garry Moore Show (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Carol Burnett and Nat King Cole are guests.

THEATER

On Broadway

Beyond the Fringe is an explosion of literate joy. Its four high-IQ British imps skewer cliches and milk sacred cows for irreverent merriment. The chief scholar-clown, Dr. Jonathan Miller, is a droll, gravity-defying pixy for whom a new vocabulary of humor will have to be invented.

Tchin-Tchin has been adapted by Sidney Michaels from a French play by Franc,ois Billetdoux. A wildly incompatible man and woman, betrayed by their respective spouses, meet to cut their emotional losses, and manage to lose everything else they have. At its core, the play is a Christian existential fable; on its surface it is a chiaroscuro of magical moods. Whenever the play is too fragile to carry them, its two stars, Margaret Leighton and Anthony Quinn, impressively carry the play.

Mr. President, with Robert Ryan in the title role and Nanette Fabray as First Lady, is the worst musical on Broadway, despite its impressive credits, but $2,650,000 in advance ticket sales will make it as durable as a bad penny.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee, is an annihilating war of love-hatred fought between a middle-aged history professor and his wife, in which a younger guest couple are also savaged. Arthur Hill, as the professor, raises acting to the level of genius, and Uta Hagen, as his wife, is a virtuoso Medusa.

The Affair makes a sleepy British university common room crackle with the charges and countercharges of a courtroom trial. Adapted from the novel by C. P. Snow, this drama is concerned with justice for a man whose personality is revolting, and whose politics are scarcely less so.

Off Broadway

A Man's a Man, by Bertolt Brecht. In a music-hall saturnalia of honky-tonk pianos, white masks and silent movie captions, the late great German playwright fashioned a prophetically dramatic exercise in brainwashing. "One man is no man," comments Playwright Brecht in this mocking, 20th century lament for the death of the individual.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Renoir, My Father, by Jean Renoir. The quirky character of the great impressionist painter, fondly reported by his gifted son, makes this one of the best biographies of the year.

A Dancer in Darkness, by David Stacton. In this neo-Gothic retelling, an old and bloody tale--best known in John Webster's 16th century play, The Duchess of Malfi--becomes a great horror story.

Black Cargoes, by Daniel Mannix. A detailed account of the savage Atlantic slave trade, all the more gripping because carefully understated.

Chekhov, by Ernest J. Simmons. An occasionally overzealous but always impressive inquiry into the complex life of one of Russia's subtlest literary figures.

The Vizier's Elephant and Devil's Yard, both by Ivo Andric. In four short novels a Yugoslav Nobel prizewinner uses modern microcosm and historic parable to attack a timeless evil: tyranny.

Say Nothing, by James Hanley. An accomplished English novelist's brittle, savage account of the guilt-edged insecurity of three lives.

The Kindly Ones, by Anthony Powell. Further fascinating pages from the author's already fat but never fatuous notebook of English upper-class doings between the wars.

Images of Truth, by Glenway Wescott. A once well-known but now largely non-practicing U.S. novelist in lively discourse on the art of fiction and his fellow writers.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. A Shade of Difference, Drury (1, last week)

2. Seven Days in May, Knebel and Bailey (2)

3. Ship of Fools, Porter (4)

4. Fail-Safe, Burdick and Wheeler

5. The Prize, Wallace (3)

6. Dearly Beloved, Lindbergh (7)

7. Where Love Has Gone, Robbins (5)

8. The Thin Red Line, Jones (6)

9. Youngblood Hawke, Wouk (8)

10. The Reivers, Faulkner (9)

NONFICTION

1. Silent Spring, Carson (1)

2. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (3)

3. The Rothschilds, Morton (4)

4. My Life in Court, Nizer (5)

5. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (2)

6. Sex and the Single Girl, Brown (6)

7. The Blue Nile, Moorehead (8)

8. Who's in Charge Here?, Gardner (7)

9. Letters from the Earth, Twain

10. The Guns of August, Tuchman (9)

* All times E.S.T.

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