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EVERGREEN PARK, ILL., Drury Lane Theater: Arms and the Man. Vintage Shaw only improves with age. His satire on the romantic view of life, love, and glory has almost as much bite today as it did when it first appeared, only a few years after the long-forgotten Serbo-Bulgarian War.
CINEMA
THE FASCIST. Italian history is wryly spoofed in the conflict between a Blackshirt corporal (Ugo Tognazzi) and the droll philosopher (Georges Wilson) whom he must steer through retreating Germans, invading Allies, and other perils common to the peninsula in 1944.
THE KNACK. As the gamin up for grabs in a town house occupied by three offbeat British bachelors, Rita Tushingham shines through the sight gags in Director Richard Lester's (A Hard Day's Night) frantic, frequently hilarious version of the New York-London stage hit.
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA. A crew of pirates led by a reprobate captain (Anthony Quinn) falls under the spell of seven seemingly innocent children whose adventures have all the fun and much of the fury of Richard Hughes's quasi-classic tale.
THE COLLECTOR. In Director William Wyler's grisly but somewhat glamorized treatment of the bestseller by John Fowles, a lovely art student (Samantha Eggar) wages a war of nerves against a manic lepidopterist (Terence Stamp) who has arranged to lock her in a dungeon.
THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES. The exploits of pioneer airmen and their flaphappy craft warm up a daffy, 1910 London-Paris air race and slapstick nostalgia is provided by Gert Frobe, Alberto Sordi and Terry-Thomas.
CAT BALLOU. The funniest if not the fastest gun in the West is Lee Marvin, a double-barreled delight in his portrayals of two desperadoes, one determined to help and one to hinder the schemes of a pistol-packing schoolmarm (Jane Fonda).
HIGH INFIDELITY. In four zesty episodes, this Italian comedy draws and quarters the subjects of extramarital dalliance, assigning the choicer bits to a jealous wife (Monica Vitti) and a vacationing businessman (Nino Manfredi).
BOOKS
Best Reading
MICHAEL FARADAY, by L. Pearce Williams. Faraday (1791-1867) was, most experts agree, the greatest experimental scientist who ever lived; the first induction of electric current and the first dynamo are among his achievements. In this excellent biography, Author Williams shows how Faraday's almost limitless intelligence emerges and finally flourishes, with only a Sunday-school education and no usable mathematics whatever.
THE CAREFUL WRITER, by Theodore M. Bernstein. A compendium of grammatical gaffes—everyday and esoteric—that is a reference book and an entertaining brushup on basic English. It will grow wings on any fledgling grammarian gadfly.
LET ME COUNT THE WAYS, by Peter De Vries. Another painfully funny novel, this one about a Polish piano mover in the Midwest, by a writer who can play the clown and Hamlet too.
INTERN, by Doctor X. At the end of each 20-hour day that he spent as an intern in a metropolitan hospital, Doctor X wearily logged every last event into a tape recorder. The result is as remote and fascinating as an anthropologist's field report, as immediate and authentic as a skilled eyewitness account.