CINEMA

Through a Glass Darkly. Sweden's icily intelligent Ingmar Bergman infuses unexpected warmth of feeling into a darkly metaphysical drama that depicts the birth of God in the form of an enormous spider.

Last Year at Marienbad. Alain Resnais, the grand admiral of the French New Wave, has produced a movie that is anything but a movie: a metaphysical enigma, a Platonic allegory, a treatise on cubistic cinema that attempts an Einsteinian revolution in the art of film, a Rorschach blot into which the spectator can project whatever he pleases.

Tomorrow Is My Turn. A military melodrama, directed by France's Andre Cayatte, that has some discriminating things to say about apparent and actual freedom and bondage.

The Lower Depths. Akira Kurosawa's Japanization of the classic comedy by Gorky boils with demonic energy and rocks with yea-saying laughter.

The Night. Marriage without love and life without meaning are examined with talent, intelligence and despair by Michelangelo Antonioni (L'Avventura), whose text might be from W. H. Auden: "The glacier knocks in the closet. The desert sighs in the bed;/ The crack in the teacup opens. A lane to the land of the dead."

Victim. An entertaining but tendentious thriller about blackmail and homosexuals.

Lover Come Back. Gagman Stanley Shapiro has written a situation comedy as smooth as baby food, and Director Delbert Mann manages to strain some humor out of Rock Hudson and Doris Day.

One, Two, Three. Billy Wilder's rough-house comedy describes a Berlin interlude in the life of a hard-headed soft-drink salesman (James Cagney) before the Wall put an end to monkey business as usual.

TELEVISION

Wed., March 28 Howard K. Smith--News and Comment (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).*

David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Life on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean.

Thurs., March 29 U.S. 1 (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A TV profile of the highway that runs from Fort Kent, Me., to Key West, Fla.

Fri., March 30 Eyewitness (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). Top news event of the week.

Sat., March 31 Accent (CBS, 1:30-2 p.m.). Texas lore, with J. Frank Dobie.

Sun., April 1 Look Up and Live (CBS, 10:30-11 a.m.). Dramatized episodes from Albert Camus' novel, The Fall.

Wisdom (NBC, 5-5:30 p.m.). Filmed conversation with the late harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. Repeat.

Meet the Press (NBC, 6-6:30 p.m.).

Guest: Mortimer M. Caplin, U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

Jacqueline Kennedy's Journey (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). The First Lady in India and Pakistan.

At This Very Moment (ABC, 9-10 p.m.). Special, with Burt Lancaster, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Belafonte, Bobby Darin, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jimmy Durante, Connie Francis, Greer Garson, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson, Bob Hope, Lena Home, the Kingston Trio, Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Newman, Jack Paar, Jane Powell, Edward G. Robinson, Dinah Shore, Danny Thomas and Joanne Woodward, benefiting the American Cancer Society.

The Jack Benny Program (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Guest: Director Billy Wilder.

Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Cyril Ritchard is "Chief Admirer" in a show documenting female beauty throughout history. Other commentators: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ruby Dee, Lillian Gish, Anita Colby, Lydia Prochnicka, Katherine Anne Porter, Jimmy Durante, Alexander King, Richard Brooks, Pierre Olaf.

Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). How the U.S. is planning its man-on-the-moon program.

Tues., April 3

The Dick Powell Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Glynis Johns in an adaptation of The African Queen, called "Safari."

THEATER

On Broadway

The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. On a Mexican veranda, four people who have come to the frayed rope end of life find the strength to go on. In its acceptance of human limitations, this is Williams' wisest play. As drama, it is his best play since A Streetcar Named Desire.

Ross, by Terence Rattigan, probes the tantalizing nature of the man and myth known as Lawrence of Arabia. The mystery is not resolved, but John Mills plays the hero with anguished honesty.

A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt, is a highly literate communique from the front line of the conscience, where public duty clashes with individual integrity. In Paul Scofield's memorable re-creation of Sir Thomas More, the mind dances and the spirit glows.

Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, treats God and man as humorous and crotchety back-fence neighbors, but the formidable acting gifts of Fredric March as God and Douglas Campbell as Gideon strike occasional sparks of awe.

Write Me a Murder, by Frederick Knott. In this thriller, a murderer writes a letter-perfect crime and almost commits it, but justice beats out literature by a noose.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying taps out the Robert Morse code of officemanship, a gleefully self-appreciative rush to the corporate summit.

Off Broadway

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, by

Arthur Kopit. An unevenly funny, surrealistic foray into the no man's land of Momism. Nymphet Barbara Harris makes the scene, the play and the evening.

Brecht on Brecht is a packet of instant genius, a revue-styled evening of poems, letters, songs and scenes from a 20th century master of theater.

BOOKS

Best Reading

A Long and Happy Life, by Reynolds Price. A wry, humorous, uncommonly good first novel about a North Carolina country girl who does not quite know how to land her laggard suitor, and who, as she learns, finds error a trial.

The Blood of the Lamb, by Peter De Vries. Humorist De Vries continues to deal with absurdity, but in this bitter novel of a man's progress from religious to secular faith, absurdity is of the existential kind: life is a joke, and a bad one at that.

A View of the Spree, by Alson J. Smith.

It seems that Kaiser Wilhelm had an American mistress, who, despite her Calvinist morality (she made him burn his collection of dirty pictures), became an ardent German nationalist. The author, her grandnephew, has set down a fascinating history, although he has failed to establish, as he believes, that Auntie was a major cause of World War I.

Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories, by John Updike. The author's ability is enormous, and his gift of language far exceeds that of most contemporaries, but these stories--a young, sensitive husband with a young, doltish wife is a typical theme--are disappointingly unambitious. Still they contain far more human perception than many a hand-heavy "major" novel.

A Signal Victory, by David Stacton. A hard, glittering, epigrammatic account of the Spanish rape of the Mayan civilization, marred by a central character who just misses coming to life.

What Is History? by Edward Hallett Carr. A Cambridge don discourses on how much of history is invention, how it should be invented, and to what end.

The Rothschilds, by Frederic Morton.

A well-detailed account of the seven-generation progress of Europe's fabulous banking clan, of whom it might now be said that royalty rivals the Rothschilds.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey. From the vantage point of a mental institution, an angry, anguished attack on the middlebrow establishment is made by the mentally ill hero of this fine first novel.

Best Sellers

FICTION

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

2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (3)

3. The Fox in the Attic, Hughes (2)

4. The Bull from the Sea, Renault (7)

5. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (10)

6. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (4)

7. Twilight of Honor, Dewlen

8. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (5)

9. Captain Newman, M.D., Rosten (6) 10. Daughter of Silence, West (8)

NONFICTION

1. My Life in Court, Nizer (2)

2. Calories Don't Count, Taller (1)

3. The Guns of August, Tuchman (3)

4. CIA: The Inside Story, Tully (4)

5. The Making of the President 1960, White (5)

6. The Last Plantagenets, Costain (6)

7. The Rothschilds, Morton (10)

8. The New English Bible

9. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (7)

10. My Saber Is Bent, Paar (8)

*All times E.S.T.

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