CINEMA
Shadows. John Cassavetes' improvised film about Negroes, whites and others in Manhattan is a flawed but significant piece of folk art.
Love and the Frenchwoman (in French). The Old Wave--sophisticated samplings of sex--returns with a cine-manthology of the seven ages of woman.
The Hoodlum Priest. A crude but telling Christian cops-and-robbers story that ends with the robber condemned to the gas chamber, and guilt assigned to all.
The Absent-Minded Professor. Walt Disney, who went delightfully to the dogs with 101 Dalmatians, scores again with a wacky science-fiction farce about Neddie the Nut and his fabulous flubber.
Breathless (in French). A formless but practically flawless cubistic portrait of the Frenchman as a young punk.
Question 7. A quietly frightening portrayal of Christianity under Communism.
Other notable current movies: Ballad of a Soldier, Make Mine Mink, Circle of Deception, The League of Gentlemen.
TELEVISION
Wed., March 29
Project 20 (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* NBC's superb series now approaches the latter half of the 19th century in "The Real West," shows it through a fast-moving montage of rare photographs, with Gary Cooper narrating.
Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Tonight's semi-documentary deals with Interpol, the communications center that keeps the cops of 64 countries sup plied with information.
Thurs., March 30
CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). A por trait of Britain, including talks with such nouveaux riches angry young authors as Novelist Alan Sillitoe, Playwrights Shelagh Delaney and Arnold Wesker.
Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). A chance to see again the patent-leather locks of Rudolph Valentino, in The Eagle.
Fri., March 31
The Bell Telephone Hour (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). "Signs of Spring," a musical med ley with Birgit Nilsson, John Raitt, Mar tha Wright, Paul Hartman. Color.
Way Out (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Novelist Roald Dahl has adapted his short story William and Mary, about the eerie re venge of a browbeaten wife, as the first offering in a new series intended to exploit eccentric stories.
Sat., April 1
Our American Heritage (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). Raymond Massey again plays Abraham Lincoln, in "Not in Vain," a fictional investigation of the events culmi nating at Gettysburg.
Sun., April 2
Easter Services. At Boston's Roman Catholic Holy Cross Cathedral (CBS, 10-1 a.m., and NBC, 11 a.m.-12 noon); at Manhattan's nondenominational River side Church (CBS, 11 a.m.-12 noon).
Sunday Sports Spectacular (CBS, 2:30-4 p.m.). National A.A.U. Swimming and Diving Championships.
The Other Adolf (ABC, 3:30-4 p.m.). Captured films of Nazi atrocities and modern German reaction counterpoint the buildup of interest in the impending trial of Adolf Eichmann.
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). A filmed flashback: New York in the '20s.
The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Guests: Soprano Leontyne Price, Basso Profundo Charlton Heston.
General Electric Theater (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). The Red Balloon, one of the greatest short motion pictures ever made.
Winston Churchill--The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). No. 16 in this splendid chronology of World War II.
THEATER
On Broadway
Big Fish, Little Fish. Despite a good deal wrong with it, this story of a minor editor who is the life force for a group of skimpy has-beens and pallid never-weres is well worth seeing. With Jason Robards Jr., Hume Cronyn, George Voskovec, George Grizzard and Martin Gabel. Directed by John Gielgud.
Mary, Mary. A thoroughly engaging comedy by Jean Kerr, author of Please Don't Eat the Daisies, who offers an obvious marriage-divorce plot but has decorated it with splendid wit.
Come Blow Your Horn. Some fresh and funny lines come in a Jewish family battle.
Irma La Douce. England's Elizabeth Seal, as a tender tart.
Advise and Consent. Allen Drury's best-selling novel about Washington makes an engrossing political melodrama. While somewhat superficial and oversimplified, at least it treats the theatrically much neglected subject of power without cant.
Rhinoceros. Eugene Ionesco's limited but exhilarating allegory about the pressure of conformity.
Camelot. Although less than the sum of its attractive parts, the Lerner and Loewe musical does provide dazzling sets, engaging music and Richard Burton.
All the Way Home. The poignant contrast of childhood and death makes for one of the season's best plays.
A Taste of Honey. An episodic but effective English look at love and humor precariously alive in a shabby world.
An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Probably the funniest people on Broadway.
Off Broadway
Among the better evenings: Call Me By My Rightful Name, an interracial-triangle drama; The Connection, Jack Gelber's graphic re-creation of a junkie's pad; The American Dream, Edward Albee's surrealistic situation comedy; The Zoo Story, Albee's famed mano a mano between Natural and Ivy League Man, running on a double bill with Samuel Beckett's lucid monologue, Krapp's Last Tape; Hedda Gabler, another excellent production in the Fourth Street Theater's Ibsen series; The Balcony, French Playwright Jean Genet's superb argument that the world is a mammoth cat house.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Ring of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell. More resourceful than most current fictional heroes, Mijbil the Otter could turn on a water tap, unzip a zipper and chew razor blades. As a pet, he was hilarious and heartwarming, and so is the book Author Maxwell has fashioned about him.
Seven Plays, by Bertolt Brecht. A splendid sampling from the complex and remarkable German playwright whose works are posthumously sweeping the world's stages.
A Burnt-Out Case, by Graham Greene.
The spiritual deformity of the desiccated soul--symbolized by the ultimate horror of man's physical being, leprosy--is the central theme of Greene's latest and greatest novel.
The Gouffe Case, by Joachim Maass. The clip-clop of hansoms and the sighs of lovelorn dandies provide mood music for this period murder tale.
The Watchman, by Davis Grubb. A marrow-chilling tale that rages against man's cruelty and sings the praises of physical love.
Midcentury, by John Dos Passos. This novel is a kind of documentary film of the times, done with all the skill, though less of the startling freshness that marked the author's famed U.S.A.
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, by Albert Camus. Sometimes called "the conscience of the age," the late great Frenchman lives up to that title in these lucid and luminous essays.
In Pursuit of the English, by Doris Lessing. Jaunty candid-camera shots of London's lower depths.
If Thine Eye Offend Thee, by Heinrich Schirmbeck. With the verve of early Huxley, the novelist asks if science is the mote in the eye of 20th century man.
Best Sellers
( SQRT previously included in TIME'S choice of Best Reading)
FICTION
1. Hawaii, Michener (2)*
2.Advise and Consent, Drury (1)
SQRT 3. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (3)
SQRT 4. A Burnt-Out Case, Greene (5) SQRT 5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (4)
SQRT 6. Winnie Ille Pu, Milne (10)
SQRT 7. Pomp and Circumstance, Coward (6)
8. The Dean's Watch, Goudge
9. China Court, Godden
10. Decision at Delphi, Maclnnes
NONFICTION
SQRT 1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (1)
2. Fate Is the Hunter, Gann (3)
3. Who Killed Society? Amory (2)
SQRT 4. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (10)
5. The New English Bible
SQRT 6. Skyline, Fowler 7. Japanese Inn, Statler (5)
8. The Waste Makers, Packard (6)
9. Profiles in Courage, Kennedy (9)
10. The Snake Has All the Lines, Kerr (7)
*All times E.S.T.
*Position on last week's list.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.