CINEMA

Throne of Blood. A barbarically splendid Japanization of Shakespeare's Macbeth; both brutalized and energized by Director Akira (Rashomon) Kurosawa, the Elizabethan tragedy becomes a noh play of demonic majesty.

The Five-Day Lover. France's Philippe (The Lore Game) de Broca has produced a minor comic mattresspiece in which hero (Jean-Pierre Cassel) and heroine (Jean Seberg) tear up the sheets with hilarious abandon; but then at the last minute, the director figuratively draws the sheets over the lovers' faces--the contemporary bedroom, he seems to be saying, is a morgue.

A Summer to Remember. New wave in Soviet cinema? Probably not, but this is the fourth good Russian film (the other three: Ballad of a Soldier, Fate of a Man, The Gordeyev Family) to reach the U.S. this year. It is a fresh, warm, funny story of a little boy's life with father in Russia.

The Kitchen. Too many cooks cannot spoil this spluttering slumgullion of socialism and melodrama, heated to a rolling boil by British Playwright Arnold Wesker.

West Side Story. This big, slick cinemusical, like the Broadway show it is based on, decorates its hoods with haloes and its cops with badges of dishonor, but its dances still seem (mostly) fresh and its Romeo and Juliet story still seems (mostly) sweet.

Loss of Innocence. A thriller of sensibility, based on Rumer Godden's novel, The Greengage Summer, celebrates a sophisticated rite of puberty in a French Chateau.

The Hustler. Director Robert Rossen racks up an impressive total score in this tale of a young pool paladin (Paul Newman) who learns that character, meaning Old Champ Jackie Gleason, is more important than talent.

TELEVISION

Wed., Dec. 6

Golden Showcase (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). PREMIERE of a new dramatic series. Tonight: George C. Scott, Susan Oliver and Louis Hayward in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Bob Newhart Show (NBC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Comedian Newhart aims his quietly lethal shafts at TV producers and the Kremlin. Color.

David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Brinkley takes two ex-soldiers--an American and a German--back to Normandy Beach, where they were enemies in 1944. Color.

Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Tonight's semi-documentary dramatization concerns the counterfeiting of popular records.

Thurs., Dec. 7

Sentry Abroad (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A news special that surveys the U.S. military establishment abroad, 20 years after Pearl Harbor.

The Great Challenge (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). A discussion of the possible role of a united Western Europe in future world affairs.

Fri., Dec. 8

Frank McGee's Here and Now (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). News feature stories. Included tonight: an inquiry into last year's explosion of an atomic reactor in Idaho.

Sat., Dec. 9

Update (NBC, noon to 12:30 p.m.). Robert Abernethy's news program for teenagers.

Sun., Dec. 10

Wisdom (NBC, 5-5:30 p.m.). A Conversation with Frank Lloyd Wright. Repeat.

Meet the Press (NBC, 6-6:30 p.m.). Guest: Under Secretary of State George W. Ball. Color.

The Wizard of Oz (CBS, 6-8 p.m.). The classic 1939 M-G-M film, with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, ct al.

Bell & Howell Close-Up (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). A study of Italy's Communist Party, the largest outside the Soviet Union and Red China, thriving in the shadow of the Vatican.

Mon., Dec. 11

Expedition (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). Tiny-game hunting in Africa--the quest for rare insects.

Tues., Dec. 12

Ernie Kovacs Special (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Ernie traces the American western as it has been presented by Hollywood in varying forms through the years.

I THEATER

On Broadway

A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt, is a prismatic play that throws its varicolored light on the theme of public duty v. private conscience. As Sir Thomas More, British Actor Paul Scofield gives a performance that is an incarnation, and the supporting cast is altogether excellent.

Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, explores the relationship of God and man in a compelling, if not exalted, drama. Fredric March and Douglas Campbell brilliantly light up Chayefsky's firmament.

The Complaisant Lover, by Graham Greene. In this amusing triangle play, Playwright Greene adopts the French point of view that adultery is too frivolous a reason for breaking up a marriage and a family.

Write Me a Murder, by Frederick (Dial "M" for Murder) Knott, is more of a will-he-do-it than a whodunit, but this thriller never lacks for high-voltage suspense.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is as enjoyable as its title is long. Rising from window washer to chairman of the board, Robert Morse is a comic marvel of apple-cheeked guile and flaming self-adoration.

A Shot in the Dark, adapted by Harry Kurnitz from a Paris hit, cleverly mingles sex and murder. Julie Harris is artfully winning as a kind of sleep-around maid.

The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter, holds a mirror up to two strange brothers and a scrofulous tramp and manages to reflect man's wayward condition.

Off Broadway

Misalliance, by George Bernard Shaw. Halfway to Heartbreak House but twice as blithesome and half as apocalyptic, this 1910 play gives the Edwardian British upper classes the chance to talk their heads off.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Lawrence of Arabia: The Man and the Motive, by Anthony Nutting. Lawrence has been so thoroughly bunked and debunked by his biographers and by his own accounts, that no one can be sure now where man and myth divide. But Author Nutting argues persuasively for his theories, which sketch a man frightened by his own vision of himself as a messiah.

Assembly, by John O'Hara. In the best of these 26 short stories, which are very good indeed, the author confines himself to the evidence of sight and sound, and to the skilled creation of mood.

The Super-Americans, by John Bainbridge. Texas as its own satire, a device used to good purpose by Reporter Bainbridge, whose portrait of the state is a readable example of malicious objectivity.

Horace Walpole, by Sheldon Wilmarth Lewis. The author provides an intimate and appreciative biography of the elegant 18th century fop and gossipist, who, writing to titillate posterity, could find a fly in any ointment, a crack in any armor.

Scrap Irony, by Felicia Lamport. Verse in homage to the great god pun, by an author whose art is in the right place.

The Complete Ronald Firbank. Duchesses, bishops, and clockwork nightingales move languidly among the silver cobwebs of the oddly fascinating world created by this ineffable British fantast.

Sinclair Lewis, by Mark Schorer. Heaping up a vast midden of minutiae, Biographer Schorer provides a satisfactory, if not definitive, portrait.

Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger. These two related stories about a young girl's brush with religious obsession are a superb part of the story cycle the author is writing about the prodigious Glass family.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (2, last week)

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

3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (3)

4. Spirit Lake, Kantor (4)

5. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (7)

6. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (5)

7. Little Me, Dennis (8)

8. Clock Without Hands, McCullers (6)

9. The Winter of Our Discontent, Steinbeck 10. Mila 18, Uris (10)

NONFICTION

1. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (1)

2. The Making of the President 1960, White (2)

3. Living Free, Adamson (3)

4. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (8)

5. Citizen Hearst, Swanberg (6)

6. I Should Have Kissed Her More, King (10)

7. The New English Bible

8. The Coming Fury, Catton

9. Larousse Gastronomique, Montagne

10. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (9)

* All times E.S.T.

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