(3 of 4)
THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN, as played by the unstoppable Debbie Reynolds, keeps this big and brassy movie version of the Broadway musical charging right along.
NOTHING BUT THE BEST. A lower-crust clerk (Alan Bates) hires an upper-crust crumb to teach him the niceties of Establishment snobbery in this cheeky, stylish, often superlative British satire.
THE ORGANIZER. Director Mario Moni-celli's drama about a 19th century strike in Turin has warmth, humor, stunning photography, and a superb performance by Marcello Mastroianni as a sort of Socialist Savonarola.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE COMPLETE WAR MEMOIRS OF CHARLES DE GAULLE (1940-1946). A moving chronicle of one man's fighting faith in France in its blackest hour. Le Grand Charles, as the '60s think of him, was grimly aware of the price of total commitment, and far more accurately than Roosevelt and Churchill, he gauged the realities of the postwar world.
THE VALLEY OF BONES, by Anthony Powell. Though it is the first book in Part II of a twelve-volume series, this dryly witty novel about England between the wars is not as labyrinthine as it sounds. Readers who awakened late to Powell's masterful work can now follow the characters chronologically. The earlier books made Marienbad of time; from now on they will follow it.
THE GAY PLACE, by William Brammer. Hardly noticed when it was first published in 1961, this first novel by a sometime aide to Lyndon Johnson has become a top-selling paperback and a political conversation piece. Deservedly, for despite fictional camouflage it is an adroitly written roman a clef about L.B.J. in the days when he was ringmaster of the U.S. Senate.
THE SCOTCH, by John Galbraith. In this memoir of his childhood in a frugal Scotch community in Ontario, the author of The Affluent Society documents the tightwad society. It is a diverting study of the Scotch and an intriguing, ironic insight into the formative influences that made Economist Galbraith an evangelist of big spending.
THE OYSTERS OF LOCMARIAQUER, by Eleanor Clark. All about the care and feeding of the world's best oysters, and the Bretons who attend them. With love and encyclopedic knowledge of Ostrea edulis, the author has written a nourishing and succulent book that can be safely read before the R months begin.
EUGENE ONEGIN, by Vladimir Nabokov. Novelist-Scholar Nabokov has rendered Alexander Pushkin's highly romantic 19th century novel-in-verse with greater accuracy and range of meaning than any previous translation. By contrast, his volumes of notes show Nabokov as an obsessive genius of the species that he kidded so guilefully in his novel Pale Fire.
CORNELIUS SHIELDS ON SAILING. Corny's own philosophy for winning races is also a frank memoir of the man, who at 70 is the champion U.S. skipper.
THE SIEGE OF HARLEM, by Warren Miller. In this book's fantasy plot, Harlem grows tired of riots and declares itself an independent nation. Miller, who lived there for five years, proves his skill both as satirist and Harlemologist.