A View from the Bridge. Playwright Arthur Miller's attempt to find Greek tragedy in cold-water Flatbush makes about as much sense as building a brownstone Parthenon, but Director Sidney Lumet has filmed the play with pace and intelligence, and Actor Raf Vallone, as the stevedore-hero, has the brute force of a cargo hook.
A Majority of One. A pleasant geriatric romance between a middle-aged Japanese textile tycoon (Alec Guinness) and a nice Jewish widow (Rosalind Russell) from New York City, with Lower-East-Side dishes of Jewish humor.
The Second Time Around. Debbie Reynolds plumes herself with horsefeathers in a comedy western that, saving her presence, would have been just one more prairie dog.
Mysterious Island. A fizzy reinflation of Jules Verne's gasbag thriller.
The Innocents. This psychiatric chiller, based on The Turn of the Screw, owes as much to Sigmund Freud as it does to Henry James, but the photography is wonderfully spooky and the heroine (Deborah Kerr) exquisitely kooky.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. The best puppet picture ever made: a feature-length version of Shakespeare's play put together by Czechoslovakia's Jiri Trnka, the Walt Disney of the Communist bloc.
El Cid. The Spanish Lancelot, hero of the wars against the Moors, is celebrated in the year's best superspectacle.
One, Two, Three. Director Billy Wilder employs contemporary Berlin as location for a Coca-Colonial comedy of bad manners that relentlessly maintains the pace that refreshes.
Throne of Blood. Director Akira (Rashomori) 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.
TELEVISION
Wed., Jan. 24
The Bob Hope Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* Highlights of Hope's Christmastime tour to entertain servicemen in the North Atlantic, with Jayne Mansfield, Jerry Colonna.
Our Man in Vienna (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Newsman David Brinkley takes a close look at the landmarks, life and people of Vienna.
Fri., Jan. 26
Continental Classroom (NBC, 6:30-7 a.m.). Tel ford Taylor, lawyer, writer, and a U.S. representative at the Nuernberg trials, speaks on American Government.
The Dinah Shore Show (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Guests are Steve Allen and Audrey Meadows, Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy, Yves Montand. Color.
Eyewitness to History (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). The week's top news story covered by CBS correspondents around the globe.
Sat., Jan. 27
Accent (CBS, 1:30-2 p.m.). John Ciardi, Oliver LaFarge, discuss American Indians in today's civilization.
Professional Bowlers' Tour (ABC, 4:30-6 p.m.). A field of 192 leading pro keglers shoots for $5,000 stakes in the Albany Open.
Sun., Jan. 28
The NBC Opera Company (NBC, 2:30-5 p.m.). A repeat of Mozart's Don Giovanni, starring Leontyne Price and Cesare Siepi, with Peter Adler conducting.
Walt Disney (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Part 2 of "Sancho, the Homing Steer" tells the exploits of a Texas longhorn that left a cattle drive to travel 1,200 miles back home on its own. Color.
G.E. Theatre (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). Irene Dunne as a widow who runs for political office in "Go Fight City Hall."
NBC White Paper (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). An analysis of the problem of welfare aid, focusing on the rebellious city of Newburgh, N.Y.
Mon., Jan. 29
Expedition (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). A trip to the Roraima plateau in South America, inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.
Hennesey (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). Sammy Davis Jr. in an episode about the misadventures of a Navy frogman aboard a submarine.
Tues., Jan. 30
The Dick Powell Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Host Powell in a drama about the U.S. Air Force in World War II.
Bell & Howell Close-Up (ABC, 10 11 p.m.). A special documentary on the subject of Christian unity.
THEATER
On Broadway
The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams, makes a tethered lizard a symbol of the condition of man, while above it, on a Mexican veranda, Bette Davis, Patrick O'Neal and Margaret Leighton tug with poetic fury at fetters of mind, body and spirit.
Ross, by Terence Rattigan, shadows the elusive psyche of T. E. Lawrence. As the hero, Actor John Mills makes a stagy script shine.
A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt. Rarely has the problem of duty v. conscience been posed with more precision of language and lucidity of thought. In Actor Paul Scofield, the hero Sir Thomas More is reincarnated.
Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, takes a large theme, the relationship of God and Man, and treats it with more humor than awe, but the performances of Fredric March and Douglas Campbell are full of fire and brimstone.
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a secret that Actor Robert Morse exuberantly shares with the audience in his great, grinning rush to the top of the corporate heap.
The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter, infuses two brothers and a verminous bum with ripples of humor, glints of malice, and a passionate regard and disregard for one another's common humanity.
Off Broadway
Brecht on Brecht is an arresting two hours with the late great German playwright, a sort of literary and dramatic revue composed of selections from his poems, letters, songs, plays and aphorisms, acted out with selfless intensity.
Misalliance, by George Bernard Shaw. G.B.S. was a teetotaler, but he could always get intoxicated on ideas. A splendid cast makes this 1910 binge infectiously amusing.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The End of the Battle, by Evelyn Waugh. The crisply written but melancholy-minded third volume of a trilogy about Britain in Waughtime--an obsolete, upper-class way of life and death that began to turn grey for Author Waugh and his hero when the Russians became Britain's allies.
Sylva, by Vercors. In a clever reworking of the woman-into-fox fable, French Novelist Vercors investigates the nature of man and man's will in a way that is moralistic but never sententious.
The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (Volumes I & II), edited by Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke. These first installments of a proposed 20-volume collection, which follow Hamilton through his 27th year, show something other than the bloodless autocrat of popular fancy; Hamilton was, as his eloquent letters prove, a man of passion and conviction.
The Burning Brand and The House on the Hill, both by Cesare Pavese. Respectively, a gloomy, brilliant private diary and a dour novel of Italy in World War II by a gifted Italian man of letters who killed himself for reasons he explained painfully in the journal.
But Not in Shame, by John Toland. The first half year of the Pacific war, one of the most discouraging periods in U.S. history, is vividly chronicled by a knowing historian.
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.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (1, last week)
2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (2)
3. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (7)
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (4)
5. Daughter of Silence, West (5)
6. Little Me, Dennis (3)
7. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (8)
8. Spirit Lake, Kantor (7)
9. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (9) 10. The Incredible Journey, Burnford
NONFICTION
1. My Life in Court, Nizer (1)
2. The Making of the President 1960, White (2)
3. My Saber Is Bent, Paar (8)
4. Living Free, Adamson (3)
5. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (6)
6. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (4)
7. The Coming Fury, Catton (5)
8. I Should Have Kissed Her More, King (9)
9. PT 109, Donovan
10. The New English Bible (7)
*All times E.S.T.
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