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FRENCH ART SONGS (RCA Victor). Like the symbolist poets whose verses he sings, Tenor Cesare Valletti evokes sensuous, delicately colored scenes in narrow frames. There are Verlaine's Clair de Lune set to music by three composers (Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré and Joseph Szulc), Verlaine's C'est I'Extase by Debussy, and Baudelaire's L'lnvitation au Voyage by Henri Duparc.
RUSSIAN ART SONGS (Vanguard). The soprano is Russian-born Netania Devrath, whose pure and sunlit voice is best suited to songs of springtime and skylarks by Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninoff; but also it can be darkened with sorrow, as in Tchaikovsky's laments (Was I Not a Blade of Grass; To Forget So Soon).
CINEMA
NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE. With improvised action and dialogue, Writer-Director Don Owen, a gifted young Canadian, mounts a spontaneous, surprisingly poetic essay about two affluent delinquents (Peter Kastner and Julie Biggs) swimming against the stream of life in suburban Toronto.
THE PAWNBROKER. Rod Steiger gives a virtuoso performance as an embittered old Jew whose memories of concentration-camp horror counterpoint the bleak daily grind of his pawnshop in Spanish Harlem.
IN HARM'S WAY. Pearl Harbor under attack sets the pace for Director Otto Preminger's slick, exciting melodrama of World War II, heroically fought by John Wayne, Patricia Neal, and a seaworthy supporting cast.
THE OVERCOAT. In Gogol's classic tale, translated exquisitely to film, a clerical nonentity (Roland Bykov) loses his life discovering that clothes make the man.
THE TRAIN. Prior to the Allied liberation, athletic Burt Lancaster pursues boxcars full of French art masterpieces toward the German border while Director John Frankenheimer wreaks havoc on the rails.
A BOY TEN FEET TALL. Handsomely photographed, this African odyssey tells of a runaway British boy (Fergus McClelland) who joins forces with a diamond thief (Edward G. Robinson) and stumbles into lots of crisp, adventurous fun.
THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Julie Andrews founds the Trapp Family Singers and triumphs over Nazis, the Tyrolean Alps, seven adorable moppets, and a schmalzy Rodgers and Hammerstein score.
DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID. Sex and sadism among the bourgeoisie of provincial France, with Jeanne Moreau as the Parisian maid who studies evil through a cool, clear glass.
ZORBA THE GREEK. Nikos Kazantzakis' novel becomes a roaring parable on life as lived by a wild old goat (Anthony Quinn) and his world-weary playmate (Oscar Winner Lila Kedrova).
RED DESERT. Color infuses plot and theme and provides the principal fascination of Director Michelangelo Antonioni's drama about a neurotic young wife (Monica Vitti) who finds the hardware of heavy industry rather depressing.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, by Samuel Eliot Morison. The historian-admiral draws heavily on his earlier works to portray the sweep of the history of all American peoples. His perspective on recent history is naturally close-up and highly personal, but the book is admirable and solidly readable nonetheless.