The Gift. A stylistic tour d'esprit that is the most original U.S. movie released so far in 1962. Subject: a creative crisis in the life of a middle-aged painter. Director: a 35-year-old commercial artist named Herbert Danska. Length: 40 minutes. Production cost: $3,123.17.
Guns of Darkness. Something of a sleeper: a routine south-of-the-border bit that develops into a philosophical thriller of remarkable moral insight.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes. When a rake and a dyke fall in love with the same girl, almost anything can happen, and practically everything does in Jean-Gabriel Albicocco's skillful but vicieuse version of a tale by Balzac.
Money, Money, Money. Jean Gabin and a gang of French comedians manufacture $2,000,000 worth of guldens--and that ain't mustard.
The Best of Enemies. War is heck in this comedy of military errors set in Ethiopia and starring David Niven and Alberto Sordi.
War Hunt. War is madness in this tragedy of military stalemate set in Korea and starring John Saxon.
A Matter of WHO. Agent Terry-Thomas of the World Health Organization in a cloak-and-needle WHOdunit about viruses and villains.
Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man. A charming, romantic study of the youthful Hemingway, as he saw himself in the Nick Adams stories: a boy who couldn't go places until he had cut the apron strings.
Bird Man of Alcatraz. Burt Lancaster gives his finest performance as a murderer who in prison becomes an ornithologist.
Ride the High Country and Lonely Are the Brave are off-the-beaten-trail westerns about men who seek the brotherhood of man in the motherhood of nature.
The Concrete Jungle. A sophisticated British thriller in which some of the best lines are written for a saxophone.
The Notorious Landlady. A silly summer shocker with Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon.
Lolita. Read the book instead.
TELEVISION
Wed., Sept. 12 Howard K. Smith: News and Comment (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.)* Guest: Admiral Hyman Rickover, talking about education.
Focus on America (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.).
The history of San Francisco's Chinatown.
David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10:30-1 1 p.m.). British Guiana and Cambodia.
Repeat.
Thurs., Sept. 13 Our Next Man in Space (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). A filmed profile of Astronaut Wal ter Schirra Jr., who is scheduled to make the next space flight, a six-orbit one.
Fri., Sept. 14 The Story of Will Rogers (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Bob Hope narrates a fine Project 20 program tracing Rogers' career from rodeo to radio. Repeat.
The Campaign and the Candidates
(NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). First of two programs on the key contests this fall for election and re-election to the House of Representatives.
Sat., Sept. 15
College Football (CBS, 1 p.m. to end). First N.C.A.A. game of the week for this season--the University of Miami v. the University of Pittsburgh.
Sam Benedict (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Premiere of a new series about a trial lawyer, played by Edmond O'Brien.
Saturday Night at the Movies (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). Tyrone Power, Patricia Neal, Hildegarde Neff, Karl Maiden and Stephen McNally in Diplomatic Courier.
Sun., Sept. 16
Inside Politics (ABC, 1:30-2 p.m.). ABC's series on November elections looks at the Massachusetts nepotizzy involving Candidate Teddy Kennedy.
Adlai Stevenson Reports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Guest: Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
Mon., Sept. 17
It's a Man's World (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Premiere of a new series about four boys who live on a houseboat moored at a river dock in a Midwestern college town.
Saints and Sinners (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Premiere of a new series about a big city newspaper and the drama that goes on in and around its offices. Nick Adams stars as a reporter. Barbara Rush makes occasional special appearances.
The America's Cup Race (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). The race series begins Sept. 15. This program develops its background, shows films of the elimination races held in August and excerpts from the two races already run by this date between the American twelve-meter yacht Weatherly and the Australian sloop Gretel.
Stump the Stars (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). Premiere of still another TV charade game. Pat Harrington Jr. is the host. Jerry Lewis and Jayne Mansfield are guests.
Tues., Sept. 18 Keefe Brasselle's Variety Gardens (CBS,
10-11 p.m.). A special that tries to recreate the flavor of the Gay Nineties in music, comedy, pantomime and miscellaneous vaudeville.
THEATER
The kernels of the 1962-63 Broadway season have been heating up for months now, and next week the corn will start to pop. At the box offices of unopened shows, giddy daredevils are lining up and waving cash. Prudent selectors are still going to the best of the shows that have survived from last season:
Top dramatic playbilling goes to The Night of the Iguana and A Man for All Seasons. Iguana is Tennessee Williams' gentlest play since The Glass Menagerie, and the wisest play he has ever written. Seasons is a play of wit and probity about a man of wit and probity, Sir Thomas More. Emlyn Williams is less effective than Paul Scofield was in the role. A Thousand Clowns lives up to its title, and Jason Robards Jr. rings merry changes on the slightly tired subject of nonconformity. In its second season, Jean Kerr's Mary, Mary remains a wisecracking play, and Barbara Bel Geddes is still in it.
A clutch of musicals caters to the best and worst of tastes. The astringent wit of Abe Burrows fuses How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and the impish energies of Robert Morse provide the explosive for an evening of delight. Multi-aptituded Zero Mostel brings his masterly clowning to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, an uproarious burlesquerie lewdly adapted from some plays of Plautus.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Birds of Paradise, by Paul Scott. A down-and-out middle-aged man is ob sessed by the memory of a summer house full of beautiful stuffed birds: a symbol of the rich confusion of his childhood in India.
The Blue Nile, by Alan Moorehead. In this rich historic tapestry (1791-1962), the author has woven with equal skill the look of the great river itself and the lives of the great figures -- rapacious explorers, splendid Mamelukes, the invading Emperor Napoleon -- who struggled along its shores.
Big Mac, by Erih Kos. A Yugoslavian social satirist shows how everyone mindlessly sings the praise of a great, useless whale when it is lugged into Belgrade.
Unofficial History, by Field Marshal the Viscount Slim. The briskly written memoirs of a British general who fought in both World Wars and enjoyed many minor skirmishes in between.
The Inheritors, by William Golding In the dawn of consciousness, the new race, Homo sapiens, exterminates the Neander thal men, demonstrating the author's point that history moves in blind ways.
Letting Go, by Philip Roth. This overlong but nonetheless impressive novel about young college faculty members shows off the author's remarkable ear for dead-ringer dialogue and his sharpeye characterization of unhappy people.
The Reivers, by William Faulkner. A last, loving look at Yoknapatawpha County, where the violence of earlier novels is replaced by high comedy.
Best Sellers FICTION 1. Ship of Fools, Porter (1, last week) 2. Youngblood Hawke, Wouk (3) 3. Dearly Beloved, Lindbergh (2) 4. The Reivers, Faulkner (4) 5. Another Country, Baldwin (7) 6. The Prize, Wallace (6) 7. Uhuru, Ruark (5) 8. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (10) 9. Letting Go, Roth (8) 10. Portrait in Brownstone, Auchincloss (9) NONFICTION 1. The Rothschilds, Morton (1) 2. My Life in Court, Nizer (2) 3. Sex and the Single Girl, Brown (4) 4. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (5) 5. The Guns of August, Tuchman (3) 6. Who's in Charge Here?, Gardner (7) 7. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (8) 8. One Man's Freedom, Williams (6) 9. Veeck -- as in Wreck, Veeck (10) 10. Men and Decisions, Strauss (9)
* All times E.D.T.
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