While a number of domestic comedies are on view, ranging from fair to sadincluding The Pleasure of His Company, The Last Time I Saw Archie, On the Doublethe field at the moment is dominated by the grim and the foreign.
IN ITALIAN: Violent Summer is an old-wave film about a short, sensuous, foredoomed affair played out in Fascist Italy. In Two Women, mother (Sophia Loren) and daughter (Eleonora Brown), prove that in World War II Italy, only those who suffer can love. La Dolce Vita is a sprawling, formless masterpiece of modern Rome's spiritual depravity and sexual excess, and L'Avventura is another endless but masterly dissection of the malignant tedium that grips contemporary Italy's empty-souled profligates.
IN POLISH: Ashes and Diamonds is a powerful and ironic farewell to arms, set in Poland in the days just after the Nazi surrender. In Kanal, a group of resistance fighters, trapped in the sewers of German-occupied Warsaw, struggle to their doom.
IN U.S. MOVIES: the accents are fairly grim, too. The plot of The Young Savages is straight from Hollywood's pasteboard jungle, but the documentary scenes of punks and finks roaming through Manhattan's tenement-glutted, garbage-strewn juvenile jungle carry the authority of the headlines. In The Secret Ways, Richard Widmark is the hero on the run, and the Communists are the heavies in this derring-documentary, photographed with edgy excitement.
TELEVISION
Wed., June 14
Kraft Mystery Theater (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* First of a new chiller series filmed in England is "The Professionals," about a safecracker who gets out of prison and into trouble.
United States Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). A custody fight turns into a murder investigation in "Trial Without Jury," a courtroom drama presented live.
Thurs., June 15
Summer Sports Spectacular (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Filmed report on this year's Grand Prix de Monaco, a sports-car race won by the thickness of a coat of paint.
CBS Reports (10-11 p.m.). A year after his first TV appearance, Walter Lippmann again comments on the world's troubles.
Ernie Kovacs Special (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). More sight-and-sound gags by an entertainer who has not heard that TV comedy is dead.
Fri., June 16
Eyewitness to History (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). One of the week's major news stories.
Sat., June 17
ABC's Wide World of Sports (5-7 p.m.). Driver Stirling Moss describes the action in the 24-hour sports-car race at Le Mans.
National Open Golf Championship (NBC, 5:30-7 p.m.). A duffer's delight: the Open's last four holes.
Sun., June 18
Major League Baseball (NBC, 2:30 p.m. to conclusion). Twins v. White Sox, except in major-league areas.
Family Classics (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). The Heiress, with Julie Harris, Farley Granger and Barry Morse. Repeat.
This Week Around the World (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The week's major stories, presented in a "magazine" format.
Tues., June 20
Focus on America (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). In "The Constant Protectors," a good local documentary, cameras prowl the streets of St. Louis with a police patrol car.
THEATER
On Broadway
This is how things stand near the end of a dismal season: