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BEETHOVEN: CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES (Columbia). Beethoven was working on the early drafts of Fidelia when he wrote his only oratorio, and so alike are the musical moods that the listener expects the soprano to break into Abscheulicher! any second. Both works insistently celebrate high moral courage, Christ on the Mount of Olives to the degree of priggishness relieved by passages of very human despair. Eugene Ormandy, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Soloists Richard Lewis and Herbert Beattie are all in fine form —but Judith Raskin's small voice is physically not capable of the demands that Beethoven makes on sopranos.
CINEMA
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Edward Albee's drama about a venomous all-night orgy on faculty row has reached the screen with every four-letter word intact. And Elizabeth Taylor, playing bitch-wife to Richard Burton's hagridden husband, proves that there is talent on both sides of the family.
THE ENDLESS SUMMER. On a round-theworld tour, two skillful surfers search for the perfect wave in a documentary that captures the appeal of a dazzling sport.
A BIG HAND FOR THE LITTLE LADY. Some hanky-panky around a card table features Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards and other poker faces playing this indoor western for a pot of laughs.
THE NAKED PREY. Manhunting in Africa a long dark century ago, with resourceful Director-Star Cornel Wilde, as the sole survivor of an ill-fated safari, who becomes fair game for savage warriors.
"THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING." The best thing about this cold war comedy is Broadway's Alan Arkin, hilarious as a Red-roving Soviet sailor whose sub is beached on a tight little island off the New England coast.
AND NOW MIGUEL. Sheep ranching in New Mexico generates excitement for the boy hero of a juvenile film by the makers of Island of the Blue Dolphins and Misty.
LE BONHEUR. The Prince Charming of Director Agnes Varda's wry fairy tale about infidelity is a rather impulsive young carpenter (Jean-Claude Drouot) who drives his wife to suicide and happily settles down with his mistress.
BORN FREE. A lioness named Elsa is as winning on the screen as she was in Joy Adamson's celebrated animal biography.
MANDRAGOLA. In Director Alberto Lattuada's romp through a Renaissance classic, some bold types carry out Machiavellian plots against the virtue of a Florentine beauty (Rosanna Schiaffino).
DEAR JOHN. The subjects of this perceptive essay on sex in Sweden are a sailor and a girl who spend a weekend learning that there is more to their relationship than lust at first sight.
THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET. Well deserving of its Oscar, the best foreign film of the year owes much of its impact to Josef Króner and Ida Kamiriska as a couple of harmless villagers who have to work out their own answers to the Jewish question in Nazi-dominated Czechoslovakia.
BOOKS
Best Reading
JUSTICE IN JERUSALEM, by Gideon Hausner. Having prosecuted Adolf Eichmann in Israel, Hausner here successfully prosecutes him again in print.
JAMES BOSWELL: THE EARLIER YEARS, by Frederick A. Pottle. The man who wrote the first great biography in English becomes himself the subject of one that is rich and delightful.