CINEMA

Mein Kampf. A calm, fair, objective and appalling documentary of Hitler and his gruesome works, compiled from newsreels, Nazi propaganda pictures, Wehrmacht battle films and secret police footage by Swedish Film Maker Erwin Leiser.

La Dolce Vita. The road to hell in this I case is Rome's Via Veneto, and it is paved with the good intentions of a gossip reporter, who slides into corruption (he becomes a pressagent) during three screen hours divided equally between boredom and skillfully done scenes of moral decay.

Days of Thrills and Laughter. Comedy and heroics, silent and violent, with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks.

L'Avventura (in Italian). Director Michelangelo Antonioni draws with exquisite skill a picture of lovers pairing unhappily on an Aeolian beach--characters bored, futile and afflicted with Kierkegaard's "sickness unto death."

Shadows. Led by Actor-turned-Director John Cassavetes, actors improvise a film on racial tensions and make some howling blunders--but also, almost accidentally, a significant piece of folk art.

TELEVISION

Wed., May 10

Perry Como's Music Hall (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* Guests are Paul Anka, Marion Marlowe and Jack E. Leonard. Color.

Naked City (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Called "C3H3(NO3)3," which means nitroglycerin, this is the story of a high school teacher (Hume Cronyn) who misplaces some.

Thurs., May 11

Summer Sports Spectacular (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Depressing or delightful, according to how the viewer views education: 200 Florida State University students doing circus acts for which many of them get college credits.

Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad.

Fri., May 12

The Twilight Zone (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). Comedian Shelley Berman plays an office worker who decides to eliminate life's annoyances--landlady, other subway riders, other office workers.

Eyewitness to History (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). A major news story, covered by the network's operatives. With Walter Cronkite.

ABC's Wide World of Sports (4:307 p.m.). The country's top bowlers roll for $75,000 in the noisy sport's grand championship match.

The Bob Hope Buick Show (NBC, 8:30-9:30 pm.). Guest stars are James Garner, Julie London, Juliet Prowse.

Our American Heritage (NBC, 9:30-10 pm.). "Woodrow Wilson and the Unknown Soldier"; still photos and live drama, with Don Ameche narrating.

Sun., May 14

Eichmann on Trial (ABC, 4-4:30 p.m.). Bill Shadel is anchorman, with Reporters Yale Newman and Quincy Howe.

Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). Walter Cronkite narrates a documentary investigation of the history of commercial aviation. Repeat.

Winston Churchill--The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Richard Burton speaks Churchill's words and Gary Merrill narrates: The Battle of the Bulge.

Tues., May 16

Expedition! (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). The first motion pictures of aborigines in Arnhem Land, in northeastern Australia.

Close-Up! (ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.). "The Land of the Black Ghost"; part 2 of a series on Kenya.

13th Annual Emmy Awards Show (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). TV applauds TV.

THEATER

On Broadway

Carnival! Lili, with a touch of Liliom, make a musical that is often, but not always, worthy of its exclamation mark. Anna Maria Alberghetti is the waif, and Pierre Olaf is a superb clown.

A Far Country. The early years of Freud are presented in an imperfect but successful marriage of document and drama. Steven Hill is able as the struggling psychoanalyst, and Kim Stanley is excellent as his patient.

Big Fish, Little Fish. An honest, unhackneyed, sometimes labored comedy about a has-been editor who lands in the frying pan of false success.

Mary, Mary. Jean Kerr's often funny, always likable, verbal pingpong match between a wisecracking divorcee and her publisher husband is just diverting enough to overcome the rather thin narrative.

The Devil's Advocate. High-intentioned and penetratingly provocative, this play, which asks the large questions, is nonetheless too theatrical.

Irma La Douce. Paris, prostitutes, and England's sprightly Elizabeth Seal in a frothy, piquant French musical.

Rhinoceros. Conformity gets a rhinoceros-hiding in lonesco's funny but farfetched allegory.

All the Way Home. Despite its inadequacies, more small coins of pure silver and less stage money than any other American play of the season.

Also recommended: Camelot, A Taste of Honey, Advise and Consent.

Off Broadway

The best back-alley art: Under Milk Wood, a fresh retelling of life in the village Dylan Thomas waggishly named Llareggub; Call Me by My Rightful Name, an astringent tale of racial misfits by New Playwright Michael Shurtleff; The American Dream, Edward Albee's effective dissection of modern man; The Connection, a relentless study of narcotics and nihilists; The Zoo Story, another Albee commentary, wedded to Samuel Beckett's monologue, Krapp's Last Tape; In the Jungle of Cities, Bertolt Brecht's intriguing early effort; Hedda Gabler, an excellent production of the Ibsen classic; and the durable Brecht-Weill-Blitzstein classic, The Threepenny Opera.

On Tour

Becket. Arthur Kennedy as the Archbishop and Sir Laurence Olivier, a formidable Henry II. Reopening on Broadway: May 8-27.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Age of Reason, by Harold Nicolson. Catherine the Great, Jonathan Swift, John Wesley and a score of other 18th century movers and shapers are laved in the warm glow of idiosyncrasy rather than the cold light of 100% accuracy. The author writes in the witty and amusing fashion of a male Nancy Mitford.

Lanterns and Lances, by James Thurber. More fun than a barrel of money.

Phaedra and Figaro, translated by Robert Lowell and Jacques Barzun. Two dramas of sexuality, one tragic and one comic, rendered with a skill that does justice to the fiery poetry of Racine and the bubbling word play of Beaumarchais.

Some People, Places, and Things That Will Not Appear in My Next Novel, by John Cheever. Pursuing the invisible fly in the ointment of their lives, John Cheever's decent, middle-class people drop into a limbo of alcoholic oblivion, sexual promiscuity and lonely despair that very much resembles hell.

Snake Man, by Alan Wykes. More remarkable than any of the rare snakes he has captured is C.J.P. Ionides, a legendary eccentric whose life displays all the imperious instincts of the aristocrat without an inhibiting trace of the code of a gentleman.

The Proverb and Other Stories, by Marcel Ayme. In the hands of this artful French writer, pictures become edible, people lapse into "temporary death," fathers take their sons' exams, and art itself becomes the science of the impossible.

The New English Bible. An often skillful, sometimes stilted attempt to make the New Testament Scripture more intelligible to moderns.

The Odyssey. Robert Fitzgerald translates into the crisp, demotic argot of today the tale of wily Odysseus.

Best Sellers

( previously included in TIME'S choice of Best Reading)

FICTION

1. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (1)*

2. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (2)

3. A Burnt-Out Case, Greene (3)

4. Hawaii, Michener (5)

5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (4)

6. Advise and Consent, Drury (7)

7. Midcentury, Dos Passes (6)

8. Don't Tell Alfred, Mitford

9. Winnie Hie Pu, Milne

10. The Chateau, Maxwell

NONFICTION

1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (1)

2. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (3)

3. The New English Bible (2)

4. My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, Parks (7)

5. Fate Is the Hunter, Gann (4)

6. Reality in Advertising, Reeves

7. Japanese Inn, Statler (6)

8. Who Killed Society? Amory (5)

9. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer

10. Skyline, Fowler (8)

* All times E.D.T.

* Position on last week's list.

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