The Innocents. A story of profound religious horror, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, has been diminished by Director Jack (Room at the Top) Clayton into a sophisticated psychiatric chiller. Deborah Kerr is exquisitely hysterical as the haunted heroine.
La Belle Americaine. A running gag about U.S. automobiles that sometimes stalls but usually crowds the speed limit; written, directed and acted by Robert (La Plume de Ma Tante) Dhery, a French comedian who is rapidly emerging as a sort of tatty Tati.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare with puppets: an intricate trick executed with taste and charm by Jiri Trnka, a Czech with an imagination quite as wild as Will's.
El Cid. The Spanish Lancelot, hero of the wars against the Moors, is celebrated in the year's best superspectacle.
One, Two, Three. A sort of Mack Sennett investigation of the situation in Berlin, conducted with a wham-bam abandon by Director Billy Wilder.
Throne of Blood. Director Akira (Rashomon) Kurosawa's grand, barbaric Japanization of Macbeth is probably the most original and vital attempt ever made to translate Shakespeare to the screen.
The Five-Day Lover. France's Philippe de Broca has directed a gay-grim comedy of intersecting triangles in which the participants suddenly discover that the dance of life is also the dance of death.
A Summer to Remember. A fresh, warm, funny Soviet film that describes what a child's life is (hopefully) like in contemporary Russia.
The Hustler. A morality play in a poolroom, brilliantly directed by Robert Rossen, vigorously played by Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, Jackie Gleason.
West Side Story. This overpraised, overprized film version of the Broadway musical is marred by pseudo-sociology and a sort of reverse race prejudice, but its dances are still fairly exciting in a faded-bluejeans sort of way.
TELEVISION
Wed., Jan. 10
Naked City (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). * Theodore Bikel in a drama about a struggling artist arrested for a murder he has no recollection of committing.
Thurs., Jan. 11
Tell It to Groucho (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). Premiere of a new series. Groucho solves guests' problems in a Marxian manner, assisted by Teen-Age Adventurer Jack Wheeler and 19-year-old Patty Harmon.
Fri., Jan. 12
The Good Years (CBS, 8:30-10 p.m.).
Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda and Mort Sahl star in a special that traces, via song and dance, comedy and drama, the American pattern of life from 1900 to the beginning of World War I.
Eyewitness (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). The week's top news story covered by CBS correspondents around the globe.
Chet Huntley Reporting (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). A report on Volgograd--formerly Stalingrad--Russia's city of memories, which has recently been destalinized.
Sat., Jan. 13
Accent (CBS, 1:30-2 p.m.). Reminiscences about the old West by J. Frank Dobie, former rancher and later University of Texas English professor.
Golden Showcase (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Tammy Grimes and Jackie Cooper in The Fourposter, Jan de Hartog's comedy of marriage.
Sun., Jan. 14
John Brown's Body (CBS, 1:30-2:30 p.m.). Richard Boone plays the leading role of the narrator in a dramatized reading of the Stephen Vincent Benet poem.
Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). A look at the risky world of sports-car racing, with Walter Cronkite interviewing Driver Stirling Moss, British ace.
Follow the Sun (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Lee Tracy stars in "The Last of the Big Spenders," with Irene Harvey.
Mon., Jan. 15
Lee, The Virginian (NBC, 8-8:30 p.m.). Thomas Mitchell is narrator of this television portrait of the great Civil War general.
Tues., Jan. 16
Alcoa Premiere (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Robert Fuller in "The Hour of the Bath," about a U.S. Peace Corpsman in Viet Nam. Fred Astaire is host.
THEATER
On Broadway
The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. A quartet of life's castaways gather on a Mexican veranda and probe their defeated dreams and violated hearts. Apart from its poetry of mood and language, this may be Williams' wisest play.
Ross, by Terence Rattigan, presents an absorbing theory of T. E. Lawrence as a man whose triumph and tragedy was his will. Actor John Mills portrays the hero with lacerating honesty.
A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt. Intelligence burns with a cool, gemlike flame in this play about private conscience versus public duty. Actor Paul Scofield is Sir Thomas More incarnate.
Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, casts the dialogue between God and Man in the folksy accents of back-fence neighborliness, but Fredric March and Douglas Campbell shoot the sparks heavenward.
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a musicomedy with a mind (Author-Director Abe Burrows). But its body and soul is Actor Robert Morse, who polishes off everybody but his grandmother in a great, grinning rush to the top of the corporate heap.
The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter, mingles brooding poetry with eruptive passion as it unfolds a strange, shifting relationship between two brothers and a scrofulous tramp.
Off Broadway
2 by Saroyan proves that Saroyan cafes, like Scott Fitzgerald parties, have a magic and a logic that are out of this world.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Burning Brand and The House on the Hill, both by Cesare Pavese. Respectively, a somber private journal and a brief, astringent novel of World War II by an Italian writer worthy of considerable respect. For reasons made clear in the journal, Pavese committed suicide in 1950.
The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (Volumes I & II), edited by Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke. These first volumes of a contemplated 20-volume collection carry Hamilton to the age of 27, show him to have been something more than a gelid autocrat; in fact, his pen is by turns so sharp, blunt or passionate, that whole sections of these books read like a lively epistolary novel.
But Not in Shame, by John Toland. The first half-year of the Pacific war, one of the most discouraging periods in US. history, is vividly chronicled by a knowing historian.
The Letters of Beethoven, edited by Emily Anderson. Worshipers trying to comprehend the mind that invented the soaring music are almost certain to be puzzled by these three volumes; they show the great Beethoven to have been absurdly petty, sour and quarrelsome in his private dealings.
Lawrence of Arabia: The Man and the Motive, by Anthony Nutting. The enigma of Britain's World War I desert hero, who chose to bury himself in the ranks of the R.A.F. under an assumed name, is analyzed again by a onetime British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
Assembly, by John O'Hara. The laureate of upper middle-class Easterners ranges ably across the old home pastures and sometimes jumps the fence into other pastures in 26 short stories.
The Super-Americans, by John Bainbridge. Reporter Bainbridge traveled to Texas, and with malice aforethought reported exactly what he found there. The result is high social satire and a welcome capital gain for the reader.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (1, last week)
2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (2)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (3)
4. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (6)
5. Little Me, Dennis (5)
6. Daughter of Silence, West (7)
7. Spirit Lake, Kantor (4)
8. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (8)
9. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (9)
10. The Incredible Journey, Burnford (10)
NONFICTION
1. My Life in Court, Nizer (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 (7)
5. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (6)
6. The New English Bible (4)
7. The Coming Fury, Catton (5)
8. I Should Have Kissed Her More, King (8)
9. My Saber Is Bent, Parr
10. Citizen Hearst, Swanberg (9)
* All times E.S.T.
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