The Bad Sleep Well. Japan's Akira Kurosawa, probing relentlessly into a big corporate scandal, accomplishes a grisly biopsy of a cancer on the Japanese social body: bribery.
Night Is My Future. Sweden's Ingmar Bergman seldom warms the heart, but in 1947, when he made this burningly romantic little picture, he still had akvavit in his veins.
Who's Got the Action? Yes, it's a Lana Turner picture, but wait--it's worth seeing. Lana plays a bookie bride, Dean Martin plays her horseplaying husband in a fairly funny formula farce.
The Lovers of Teruel. One of those ballet movies, but this time it's for surreal, and Ludmila Tcherina, though she wobbles on her toes, gives the picture body.
Eclipse. The trouble with modern man, says Michelangelo Antonioni in most of his movies (L'Avventura, La Notte), is that he has gained the whole world and lost his own soul; the trouble with this picture is that Antonioni in his obsessive pessimism ignores an important fact of human life: a deep shadow can be cast only by a strong light.
David and Lisa. In his first movie, made for less than $200,000, Director Frank Perry tells a heartrending, heart-warming tale of two psychotic adolescents (Keir Dullea and Janet Margolin) who find love at the bottom of the snake pit.
Lawrence of Arabia. Produced by Sam Spiegel and directed by David Lean, this $10 million superspectacle stars a glamorous newcomer named Peter O'Toole as the guerrilla genius of World War I; but the big attraction of the picture is the glittering golden desert of northern Arabia.
Freud. Director John Huston has turned out an intense, intelligent cinemonograph on the early struggles of the papa of psychiatry, portrayed without much psychological insight by Montgomery Clift.
Electra. Greek tragedy is a nectar that does not travel well, but Director Michael Cacoyannis has managed to transform the tragedy by Euripides into a beautiful and sometimes touching film.
TELEVISION
Wednesday, January 30
Self-Portrait (CBS, 7:30-8 p.m.).* White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger tells his life story to Harry Reasoner.
Thursday, January 31
Dinner with the President (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). J.F.K. is guest of honor at a B'nai B'rith dinner, with entertainment by folk singers and a folk ballet by Broadway Choreographer Hanya Holm.
Saturday, February 2
Exploring (NBC, 12:30-1:30 p.m.). Following a nautical theme today, this children's program demonstrates the hornpipe, reads Wynken, Blynken and Nod, talks about navigation, whaling, etc.
Challenge Golf (ABC, 2:30-3:30 p.m.). Jerry Barber and Cary Middlecoff challenge Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.
Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Two-man bobsled championships from Innsbruck, Austria, and the National Outdoor Speedskating championships from St. Paul.
The Defenders (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Hopefully, a high-octane refinement of a situation like the Finch-Tregoff trial: a man and his mistress face a murder rap, and the victim, of course, is his wife.
Saturday Night at the Movies (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten, and Jean Peters in Niagara.
Sunday, February 3
Lamp Unto My Feet (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.). Excerpts from the diaries and letters of German Artist Kathe Kollwitz, 1867-1945.
Meet the Professor (ABC, 1:30-2 p.m.). Guest: W. D. Blackburn, professor of English and creative writing at Duke.
The Sunday Sports Spectacular (CBS, 2:30-4 p.m.). Skiing at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, and gymnastics at Prague.
The Great Challenge (CBS, 4-5 p.m.). A discussion of education in the U.S., with Henry Heald, president of the Ford Foundation, Francis Keppel, U.S. Commissioner of Education, et al.
Meet the Press (NBC, 6-6:30 p.m.). Guests: Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and House Minority Leader Charles Halleck.
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). Documentary about Finland and life under the hovering sickle.
White Paper (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). The story of Khrushchev's rise to power.
The Voice of Firestone (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Guests: Ferruccio Tagliavini, Teresa Stratas, George Ricci, Conductor Milton Katims.
Monday, February 4
Monday Night at the Movies (NBC, 7:30-9:30 p.m.). The Enemy Below, with Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens.
The Bell Telephone Hour (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Guests: Joan Sutherland, Pat Boone, Mindy Carson, et al.
Tuesday, February 5
Chet Huntley Reporting (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). A look at Nicaragua in the aftermath of the elections there.
THEATER
On Broadway
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, by Tennessee Williams. A rich old clownish woman rages desperately against the good night of death, until a Christ-figure comforts her tormented soul. Hermione Baddeley plays the dying woman with blinding, blistering brilliance.
Little Me wears its high-polish frivolities with a sophisticated air. The chief fun-master of this musical is Sid Caesar, who clowns his way through seven roles with imperial abandon.
Never Too Late, by Sumner Arthur Long, gives birth to mirth by lending mirth to birth, as fatherhood closes in on a 60-year-old lumber merchant. Paul Ford plays the morose papa-to-be, and the only straight face in the house is his.
Beyond the Fringe chips away at petrified people, calcified cliches and sacrosanct cows with remarkable satiric finesse. Four young and infectiously funny Englishmen perform the iconoclastic surgery.
Tchin-Tchin. A man and a woman whose respective marriages have broken up want to stop the world and get off, and in their sad-amusing, absurdly unworldly way, they do. Margaret Leighton and Anthony Quinn are effulgent.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee, detonates a shattering three-act marital explosion that, for savage wit and skill, is unparalleled in the recent annals of the U.S. stage.
Off Broadway
Desire Under the Elms, by Eugene O'Neill, offers playgoers a valuable, if somewhat blurry, look at the handiwork of the U.S. master playwright. George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst do their impressive best by O'Neill, who is mostly at his secondbest.
The Dumbwaiter and The Collection are two one-acters by Britain's Harold Pinter, a playwriting terrorist who can conjure up menace with the easy authority of a Hitchcock, and pose Pirandellphic conundrums about the nature of truth and reality.
A Man's a Man. Is it right to brainwash a man if it makes him happy? Is the individual an anachronism in the 20th century? These are some of the questions posed with inventive theatricality in this 1926 play by Bertolt Brecht.
RECORDS
Monk's Dream (Thelonious Monk Quartet; Columbia) is also a jazz listener's dream. In his first recording in years, Monk sounds better than ever. His new compositions still display the wonders of his imagination, but much of his old cliff-hanging love of anti-melody has disappeared. His quartet is competent, but hardly in his league.
The Tokyo Blues (The Horace Silver Quintet; Blue Note) is a fascinating marriage of Latin rhythms to Oriental melodies, presided over by the lingering blues sound of Silver's piano. Gene Taylor's bass solos are the best expression of this trans-Pacific bossa nova, and Junior Cook on tenor sax makes the trip seem pleasant and short.
Know What I Mean? (Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans; Riverside) is scarcely a question that deserves an answer. Adderley doesn't know himself, and he exhibits his lack of conviction by flirting with every saxophone style he can think of. But even at that he is a very engaging player, and coupled with Pianist Bill Evans' dark moods, he seems a true blithe spirit.
"Jeru" (Gerry Mulligan; Columbia) is Miles Davis' nickname for Mulligan, and it casts an appropriate in-group mood for the album. Mulligan aficionados will be astonished to hear a piano in the quartet behind him--a direct violation of Mulligan's long boycott of pianists. But the man playing it here is Tommy Flanagan, and keeping Flanagan off a record is like keeping Willie Mays in the dugout. Alec Dorsey's congo drumming is a nuisance.
Two of a Mind (RCA Victor) puts Mulligan in the company of Saxophonist Paul Desmond, who rarely swings at his regular employment as Dave Brubeck's commentator, but here is the match of Mulligan himself.
Make Someone Happy (Moodsville) blends the lyric charm of Coleman Hawkins' ancient saxophone with an almost perfect rhythm section: Tommy Flanagan, piano; Major Holey, bass; and Eddie Locke, drums. The result is indeed happy, proving, as it does, that The Hawk is still a master of the mellow, a professor of the placid.
Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros (Riverside) casts Guitarist Charlie Byrd in with a mixture of accompanists who sometimes keep the pace and sometimes fall behind. Remarkably, either event serves to enhance Byrd's richly inventive style. He manages to make bossa nova sound almost like music.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Underdogs, by Mariano Azuela. Mexico's bestselling novel of all time, just reissued in English, is a searing story of what happens to bewildered peasants buffeted by the hurricane of revolution.
March to Calumny, by Albert Biderman. In this detailed study of how captured G.I.s in Korea behaved, Historian Biderman corrects a widespread notion that they were cowardly and easily brainwashed.
Diary of an Early American Boy, by Eric Sloane. An account of the day-to-day life of a 15-year-old (circa 1800) who spent his time brewing butternut ink and learning how to build a house without nails, with the author demonstrating just how everything was done.
A Girl in Winter, by Philip Larkin. One of England's finest poets makes one lonely girl's story an echo of human isolation everywhere.
The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem, by Myrick Land. Carlyle was not feuding with Emerson when he called him "a hoary-headed and toothless baboon," but most of the other literary figures in this book are--and their pejorative language is choice.
The Sand Pebbles, by Richard McKenna. Writing his first novel at 49, an ex-Navy enlisted man tells how a ship's crew degenerates behind a facade of spit and polish, then finds itself again.
Franz Kafka, Parable and Paradox, by Heinz Politzer. A brilliant guide to the nightmarish parables of a writer who saw individual man as a helpless insect lost in the mass world he has helped create.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Seven Days in May, Knebel and Bailey (2, last week)
2. Fail-Safe, Burdick and Wheeler (1)
3. A Shade of Difference, Drury (3)
4. The Cape Cod Lighter, O'Hara (4)
5. Genius, Dennis (5)
6. The Sand Pebbles, McKenna (6)
7. $100 Misunderstanding, Gover (9)
8. Ship of Fools, Porter (10)
9. The Thin Red Line, Jones
10. The Prize, Wallace
NONFICTION
1. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (1)
2. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (4)
3. The Points of My Compass, White (5)
4. Silent Spring, Carson (2)
5. Happiness Is a Warm Puppy, Schulz (3)
6. Final Verdict, St. Johns (6)
7. The Rothschilds, Morton (10)
8. My Life in Court, Nizer (8)
9. Letters from the Earth, Twain (7)
10. The Pyramid Climbers, Packard
* All times E.S.T.
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