(3 of 4)
NOBODY SEES ME CRY (Columbia). Diahann Carroll lights a torch with her own special fire, which she carries into the blues. Her sensual, perfected purr is the result, she says, of "cutting away the frills." And it's pure indigo when she sings Little Girl Blue and I'll Be Around, along with a couple of upbeat songs such as Don't Answer Me and Runnin' Out of Fools.
CINEMA
NAKED AMONG THE WOLVES. The story of the concentration camps has been filmed before—and with greater skill—but the theme of the indomitable prisoners bears frequent retelling. This East German tale of the inmates of Buchenwald attempting to hide a three-year-old boy from their Nazi torturers gives credence to the hope for civilization's ultimate survival.
ACCIDENT. Screenwriter Harold Pinter and Director Joseph Losey probe the inner anxiety of a group of Oxford dons, students and wives and find more bone than flesh.
LA VIE DE CHATEAU. A farce about the German occupation of Normandy that proves that the flip side of war and the flop side of marriage can be equally funny.
ULYSSES. James Joyce's masterpiece is a short story that exploded into a summa of 30 centuries of Western culture; Joseph Strick's adaptation is merely a pictorial precis of some of the principal episodes—but a good one.
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. Shakespeare possibly would not have recognized his comedy, but he certainly would have enjoyed watching the Burtons in Franco Zeffirelli's lusty, sensuous production.
FALSTAFF. Orson Welles may be the first actor in the history of the theater to appear too fat to play Shakespeare's "huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak bag of guts." In his compilation of five of the Bard's plays, some Wellesian genius flickers but does not burn brightly enough to illuminate the long dull stretches.
BOOKS
Best Reading
JUST AROUND THE CORNER: A HIGHLY SELECTIVE HISTORY OF THE THIRTIES, by Robert Bendiner. A wry, dry, lively and unsentimental recollection of the not-so-faraway time of 3.2 beer, 5¢ apples, $4-a-month domestics and the Great Depression.
LANGUAGE AND SILENCE, by George Steiner. At 38, Steiner has earned a name as one of the leading U.S. literary critics and a possible successor to Edmund Wilson. This collection of eloquent essays shows why.
MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND? AND OTHER COMEDIES OF THE SEXUAL LIFE, by Graham Greene. While sex is the name of the game in this collection of short stories, Old Pro Greene thoroughly gilds the libido with the sensibilities of an informed heart.
A MEETING BY THE RIVER, by Christopher Isherwood, limns sharply contrasting portraits of brothers—one saintly, the other venal. Esthetically, at least, sin triumphs: the evil brother ranks with Sally Bowles and Arthur Norris among Isherwood's most likable rogues.
THE CHOSEN, by Chaim Potok. Another hearty bowl of New York Jewish chicken soup, though this time the rebellion against orthodoxy is set against a background of Brooklyn in the waning days of World War II.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BERTRAND RUSSELL. Old (94) Mathematician Russell's own witty account of his dour and dotty early life and career never explains—but does help people understand—why he is such a conundrum.