(3 of 4)
THE WILD BUNCH. There are equally generous doses of blood and poetry in this raucous western directed by Sam Peckinpah. Telling a violent yarn about a group of freebooting bandits operating around the Tex-Mex border at the turn of the century, Peckinpah uses both an uncommonly fine sense of irony and an eye for visual splendor to establish himself as one of the very best Hollywood directors.
STAIRCASE. There are two good reasons to see this film version of Charles Dyer's play, and they are Richard Burton and Rex Harrison. Portraying a bickering, desperate homosexual couple on the brink of old age, both men turn in their best screen performances in years.
TRUE GRIT. At 62, John Wayne is still riding tall in the saddle. Playing a hard-drinking but softhearted lawman in this cornball western comedy, Wayne proves that his nickname, "The Duke," has never been more apt.
BOOKS
Best Reading
FAT CITY, by Leonard Gardner. A brilliant exception to the general rule that boxing fiction seldom graduates beyond caricature, this first novel convincingly explores the limbo lives of three men in a shoddy California town, who cling to the ring and get nowhere.
THE FRENCH: PORTRAIT OF A PEOPLE, by Sanche de Gramont. Only the cuisine comes off unscathed in this entertaining analysis vinaigrette of the French national character.
BIRDS, BEASTS AND RELATIVES, by Gerald Durrell. Zoology begins at home, or at least that's the way it seems to Naturalist Durrell, who recalls his boyhood infatuation with animals and his family's strained tolerance of some of the things that followed him into the house.
THE COST OF LIVING LIKE THIS, by James Kennaway. An intense and coldly accurate novel about a man's coming to gloomy terms with the cancer that is pinching off his life.
DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS, by Jorge Amado. A leisurely, sensuous tale of a virtuous lady and her conjugal rites —as vivid and bawdy as Boccaccio.
SIAM MIAMI, by Morris Renek. The trials of a pretty pop singer who tries to sell herself and save herself at the same time. Astoundingly, she manages both.
THE BIG LITTLE MAN FROM BROOKLYN, by St. Clair McKelway. The incredible life of Stanley Clifford Weyman, who cracked the upper crust by posing at various times as U.S. Consul General to Algiers, a physician and a French naval officer.
FLASHMAN: FROM THE FLASHMAN PAPERS 1839-1842, edited and arranged by George MacDonald Fraser. But don't believe it for a minute. Though it has fooled several scholars, Flashman is actually an agreeable fictional takeoff on assorted British tales of derring-do in the days of the Empah.
SHAW: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1856-1898), selected by Stanley Weintraub. Shaw never wrote one. But this paste-and-scissors portrait fashioned from fragments of the great man's work serves its purpose well enough.
COLLECTED ESSAYS, by Graham Greene. In notes and criticism, the prolific novelist provocatively drives home the same obsessive point: "Human nature is not black and white but black and grey."
PAIRING OFF, by Julian Moynahan. The book masquerades as a novel but is more like having a nonstop non sequitur Irish storyteller around—which may, on occasion, be more welcome than well-made fiction.