MOST of the year's dozen best movies seemed to come in pairs: two comedies, two musicals, two war films, two problem dramas and a couple of German language pictures. In a class of its own as the year's best film: Director David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai, with Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa, William Holden and Jack Hawkins. For TIME'S complete list, see CINEMA'S Choice for 1957.

IN a season when economic and political pundits are working over the faults and weaknesses of the U.S., a TIME correspondent drove into California's San Joaquin Valley to bring up to date a story of fault and weakness that fascinated the pundits 25 years ago. His question: Whatever happened to the Okies--the thousands of desperate farm families that fled drought and Depression and swarmed into California in the 1930s? The answer turned out to be a story of adversity that turned to strength for both a migrant people and a region of fabulous fertility. See NATIONAL AFFAIRS, The Harvesters.

THE year of the Sputniks is followed by the U.S. election year 1958, and the prospect of political wrangling over the responsibility for defense shortfalls has already cast its shadow over the session of Congress that begins next week. See NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Ready for the Brawl. One point of U.S. defense policy that deserves the most serious debate is the rising argument for some sort of U.S. general staff system in the Pentagon, an argument that has defenders of the present system warning of the dangers of a Bismarck-like Prussian general staff, the reform-minded warning of the dangers of present-day disorganization. See NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Toward a U.S. General Staff?

TV slid smoothly from 1957 to 1958 without skipping a commercial; the turn of the year was just a turn in the bend of the season that began last fall. Still, it was a time for reappraisal, agonizing and otherwise. For a look at the TV season in midpassage, see TV & RADIO, Year of the Horse.

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