(3 of 4)
ACCIDENT. Screenwriter Harold Pinter and Director Joseph Losey probe the inner anxiety of a group of Oxford dons, students and wives, and find more bone than flesh.
THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. Too many slices of cutie-pie and dance interludes as spurious as bathtub gin make this excursion back to the '20s thoroughly maudlin.
LA VIE DE CHĀTEAU. A farce about the German occupation of Normandy which proves that the flip side of war and the flop side of marriage can be equally funny.
ULYSSES. Director Joseph Strick has fashioned, if not the best, certainly not the worst possible film version of James Joyce's novel, assisted by a fine cast of actors (particularly Milo O'Shea as Bloom) who ring as true as Irish shillings.
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. The Burtons and Director Franco Zeffirelli have mounted the liveliest screen incarnation of Shakespeare since Olivier's Henry V.
PERSONA. A famous actress (Liv Ullman) and a nurse (Bibi Andersson) exchange personalities in this absorbing movie directed by Sweden's Ingmar Bergman.
HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING. This movie version of the 1961 Broadway hit musical succeeds by sticking close to the original, but also disappoints by not really trying for fresh cinematic values.
FALSTAFF. Actor Orson Welles has caught more of the dark than the light side of Shakespeare's pun-prone, fun-filled roisterer, and Director Welles's amalgam of five of the historical plays is often stonily dull, despite some sparks of genius.
LA GUERRE EST FINIE. A peek through the other end of the spyglass, as French Director Alain Resnais examines the mind and mores of a Communist agitator left over from the Spanish Civil War but still traveling the dreadmill.
YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW. Peter Kastner heads a cast that includes Julie Harris, Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page and Rip Torn in this daft, though not always deft, first effort by Director Francis Ford Coppola.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE UNICORN GIRL, by Caroline Glyn. A rangy, clumsy 13-year-old goes off to Girl Guide camp to find a few friends but finds herself instead. Along the way, Novelist Glyn points out some of the hilariously muddled drills the Guides perform with alarming girlish intensity.
JOURNEY THROUGH A HAUNTED LAND: THE NEW GERMANY, by Amos Elon. A searching and compassionate study of today's Germany by an Israeli journalist who never forgets that he could have been a victim of yesterday's Germany.
DISRAELI, by Robert Blake. The wiles and wit of Britain's most prodigal Victorian Prime Minister, whose life as recounted in this excellent biography proves even richer than the many versions of its myth.
FATHERS, by Herbert Gold. A basically sentimental celebration of fatherhood—Jewish fatherhood, in particular—that rises above itself because of the author's high craftsmanship, fine irony and strong sense of the absurd.
THE MURDERERS AMONG US: THE WIESENTHAL MEMOIRS, edited by Joseph Wechsberg. The incredible career of Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who brought Adolf Eichmann and 800 other war criminals to justice.