(3 of 4)
ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS. This intelligent and tasteful tale of an Indian girl (Celia Kaye) who shares an island exile with her dog is a model of what children's pictures ought to be but seldom are.
A SHOT IN THE DARK. As a maladroit inspector from the Sureté, Peter Sellers pursues Elke Sommer through a multiple murder case and turns up fresh evidence that he is one of the funniest actors alive.
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED. Young love becomes a savage Sicilian nightmare in a sometimes wildly farcical, sometimes deeply affecting tragicomedy by Director Pietro Germi, previously noted for his brilliant Divorce—Italian Style.
MAFIOSO. Director Alberto Lattuada fills in the background with some gloriously garlicky slices of provincial Sicilian life while Comedian Alberto Sordi struggles soberly with the insidious Mafia.
ZULU. A bit of bloody British history, vintage 1879, makes a grisly good show as a doughty band of redcoats defends an African outpost against 4,000 proud Zulu warriors.
THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN. As a girl from the mining camps, Debbie Reynolds makes waves in Denver society and energetically keeps this big, brassy version of Meredith Willson's Broadway musical from going under.
NOTHING BUT THE BEST. A lower-crust clerk (Alan Bates) hires an upper-crust crumb to teach him the niceties of Establishment snobbery in this cheeky, stylish, often superlative British satire.
THE ORGANIZER. Director Mario Moni-celli's drama about a 19th century strike in Turin has warmth, humor, stunning photography, and a superb performance by Marcello Mastroianni as a sort of Socialist Savonarola.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE OYSTERS OF LOCMARIAQUER, by Eleanor Clark. By weaving history, topography, marine biology and lyrical gastronomy around the arduous everyday lives of the French seacoast villagers who tend and harvest the Ostrea edulis, Author Clark has written a book-length monograph on the world's most prized oyster with the same beguiling erudition that characterized her Rome and a Villa.
EUGENE ONEGIN, translation and commentary in four volumes by Vladimir Nabokov. Polylingual, and a poet in his own right, Novelist-Scholar Nabokov (Pale Fire) has translated Alexander Pushkin's remarkable 19th century novel-in-verse with a sense of accuracy and range of meaning closer to the original Russian than any previous version. Nabokov's supplementary volumes of notes provide the amusing, exasperating and always impressive sight of a crusty literary personality in action.
SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION, by Ken Kesey. The author's first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, took place in an insane asylum and proposed the paradox that a good man is hated by lesser men equally in triumph and defeat. This second novel, which repeats the same theme in a larger setting, is less effective for the added dimensions, yet is as exuberant and brawling as the Pacific Northwest lumbering country it describes.
THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN, by Louis Auchincloss. No better chronicler of Massachusetts' elite Groton School and its wise, eccentric founder, Endicott Peabody, could be hoped for. This intricate, fascinating novel about "Dr. Prescott" of "Justin" finally fulfills Author Auchincloss' long promise as a major novelist.