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THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. Italian Director Gillo Pontecorvo's newsreel-style account of the F.L.N. guerrilla war against the French has the brutal impact of a bombe plastique.
THE CLIMAX. Ugo Tognazzi gives an exquisitely humane performance as a three-family man (one wife, two mistresses, six children) in a bittersweet comedy produced, written and directed by Italy's Pietro Germi.
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS. Czech Director Jiří Menzel's poignant film is a series of contradictions: a tragic comedy, a peaceful war movie, a success story of a failure.
UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE. In this skillful culling of memorable moments from Bel Kaufman's bestselling book about a teacher's struggle in a slum high school, Sandy Dennis re-creates the tyro schoolmarm with considerable grace.
THE BIG CITY. Satyajit Ray has taken a simple tale of six people living in a Calcutta tenement and fashioned an eloquent testimonial to the courage of ordinary people facing ordinary problems.
THE THIEF OF PARIS. French Director Louis Malle (The Lovers) could have used a first story for this disjointed film about a fin de siecle second-story man. Even so, there are a few stolen treasures, including Jean-Paul Belmondo's performance.
THE BIRDS, THE BEES AND THE ITALIANS. Adultery—Italian style, by Divorce—Italian Style Director Pietro Germi. Virna Lisi supplies the sugar and spice. Really quite nice.
THE WHISPERERS. An old, retired domestic on the dole in an English industrial town is the somewhat sociological subject of this film, which nevertheless rises to uncommon heights because of a soaring performance by Dame Edith Evans.
BOOKS
Best Reading
TWENTY LETTERS TO A FRIEND, by Svetlana Alliluyeva. The dark and poignant revelations of Stalin's daughter about life with father.
YEARS OF WAR, 1941-1945; FROM THE MORGENTHAU DIARIES, by John Morton Blum, uses the detailed personal diaries of F.D.R.'s Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr., to trace the career of that imperious New Dealer from 1941, when he organized a wartime fiscal-fitness program for the U.S. economy, through the 1945 "Morgenthau Plan" for emasculating and dismembering conquered Germany, which cost him his job.
A GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS, by Joyce Carol Gates. In a season of female discontent, this heroine is a poor girl determined to make good, but fated to go mad. A naturalistic novel of considerable power.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: THE EVOLUTION OF GENIUS by Winifred Gérin. A meticulous biography illuminates the murky legend of the baffling, star-crossed Brontë sisters, especially Charlotte, the author of Jane Eyre.
THE COLD WAR AS HISTORY, by Louis J. Halle, peels away the emotions of 1945-62 to reveal one of history's most clear-cut conflicts resulting from Great Power misunderstanding.
A HALL OF MIRRORS, by Robert Stone. A first novel about three castoffs of American society who come to rest in New Orleans. Author Stone has achieved a rare combination of humor, despair and moral wrath.