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WAGNER: DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NüRNBERG (RCA Victor; 5 LPs). There is no single coruscating star unless it is Conductor Joseph Keilberth, who makes the long score snap with life rarely caught even when recorded, as this was, during a performance (the opening of the rebuilt National Theater in Munich). Basses Otto Wiener and Hans Hotter give their well-established interpretations as Hans Sachs and Veit Pogner, but the freshest voices belong to two Americans, Soprano Claire Watson as Eva and Tenor Jess Thomas as Walther.
CINEMA
THE OVERCOAT. In this virtually flawless Russian film based on Gogol's classic story, Roland Bykov is superb as the nondescript clerk for whom a new overcoat becomes a matter of life and death.
A BOY TEN FEET TALL. An orphaned British lad (Fergus McClelland) wandering alone through Africa falls in with a grizzled old diamond poacher (Edward G. Robinson) in a crackling adventure story with the charm of Huck Finn and the ruggedness of a Hemingway safari.
THE TRAIN. Boxcars full of French art are the rolling stock of Director John Frankenheimer's muscular World War II drama about a Nazi colonel (Paul Scofield) and a Resistance leader (Burt Lancaster) playing tug-of-war with trains.
DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID. As a Parisian servant girl employed in a French provincial home, Jeanne Moreau grapples with family skeletons and smoothly finds her way through the murkier passages of a bleak, bitter satire directed by Luis Buñuel (Viridiand).
THE SOUND OF MUSIC. The Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein operetta looses a landslide of sentimental song, but its most spectacular effects are achieved by Julie Andrews and the Tyrolean Alps.
RED DESERT. A wasteland created by heavy industry pollutes the psyche of a young wife (Monica Vitti) in Director Michelangelo Antonioni's first color film.
HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE. Uxoricidal impulses, batted around with a slapstick by Jack Lemmon as a reluctant husband, Terry-Thomas as his woman-hating Man Friday, and Italy's Virna Lisi as the superfluous lady.
MARRIAGE-ITALIAN STYLE. After 20 years of fun, a pastry merchant (Marcello Mastroianni) discovers that his homeloving harlot (Sophia Loren) has hoarded up enough wild oats for a wedding cake.
ZORBA THE GREEK. The heart and soul of Nikos Kazantzakis' novel are brought roaringly to life by Anthony Quinn as the wicked old brute who teaches a timid essayist (Alan Bates) to put away his books and plunge into real trouble.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE MAN WHO LOVED CHILDREN, by Christina Stead. This singular novel of family life was considered too intemperate when it was first published in 1940. Now, countless case studies later, Miss Stead's distillation of the warfare between neurotic parents rings terrifyingly true.
CASTLE KEEP, by William Eastlake. A medieval castle deep in the Ardennes Forest is occupied by a decadent count, his child-wife, and a bumbling, boondoggling bunch of G.I.s who find themselves squarely in the path of the German thrust for Bastogne. Interweaving satire, tragedy and gothic mystery, Novelist Eastlake has created a surreal small masterpiece.