(3 of 4)
THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY. Marlon Brando is back in brilliant form as a hipster-criminal in this thriller directed by Hubert Cornfield, who uses a story about kidnaping as an excuse to conduct a surreal seminar on the poetics of violence.
I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW) is the movie everyone has heard about but few will be able to sit through. Its widely publicized sex scenes are secondary to a seemingly interminable journalistic narrative about youth (mainly Lena Nyman and Borje Ahlstedt) and politics in Sweden.
THE FIXER. John Frankenheimer has directed this adaptation of Bernard Malamud's novel with care and dedication. Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde and Ian Holm all seem perfect in their roles.
THE STALKING MOON pits canny frontier scout Gregory Peck against an ingenious Indian bent on a bloody and horrible revenge. The outcome is predictable, but Director Robert Mulligan manages a couple of good chills along the way.
SWEET CHARITY. A great deal of energy obviously went into this project. Most of it, including Shirley MacLaine's performance as a dance-hall hostess, goes to waste.
RED BEARD. Japan's Akira Kurrsawa, who is counted as one of the world's greatest moviemakers, takes a simple story of the spiritual growth of a young doctor and transforms it into an epic morality play.
THE SHAME. Ingmar Bergman ponders once again the problems of an artist's moral responsibility. This is his 29th film and one of his best, with resonant performances by Liv Ullman, Max von Sydow and Gunnar Bjornstrand.
BOOKS
Best Reading
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Through flashbacks to the fire bombing of Dresden in World War II, this agonizing, outrageous, funny, profoundly rueful fable tries to say something about the timeless nature of human cruelty and self-protective indifference.
URGENT COPY, by Anthony Burgess. In a collection of brilliant short pieces about a long list of literary figures (from Dickens to Dylan Thomas), the author brings many a gaudy critical chicken home to roost.
EDWARD LEAR, THE LIFE OF A WANDERER, by Vivien Noakes. In this excellent biography, the Victorian painter, poet, fantasist, and author of A Book of Nonsense is seen as a kindly, gifted man who courageously tried to stay cheerful despite an astonishing array of diseases.
THE SECRET WAR FOR EUROPE, by Louis Hagen. As he explores the development of espionage agencies and replays a host of cold war spy cases, the author presents a detailed view of politics and espionage in Germany since 1945.
REFLECTIONS UPON A SINKING SHIP, by Gore Vidal. A collection of perceptively sardonic essays about the Kennedys, Tarzan, Susan Sontag, pornography, the 29th Republican Convention, and other aspects of what Vidal sees as the declining West.
THE MILITARY PHILOSOPHERS, by Anthony Powell. The ninth volume in his serial novel, A Dance to the Music of Time, expertly convoys Powell's innumerable characters through the intrigue, futility, boredom and courage of World War II.
GRANT TAKES COMMAND, by Bruce Catton. Completing the trilogy begun by the late historian Lloyd Lewis, Catton employs lucidity and laconic humor as he follows the taciturn general to his final victory at Appomattox.