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ILLINOIS JACQUET PLAYS COLE PORTER (Argo). The sinuous lines of these dozen ballads (Get Out of Town, I've Got You Under My Skin) are almost jazz-resistant, and the arrangers, feeding them to a 19-piece orchestra with strings and a harp, just let them flow. The rhapsodic, old-fashioned results are saved from banality by the carved, dark mahogany solos of Veteran Tenorman Jacquet.
CANNONBALL ADDERLEY: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (Capitol). Cannonball's alto sax has lost its old, zesty funkiness, but it still provides some bright and airy embellishments, as do his drummer and bass player. Tradition and the bolero-tempoed dance Cajvalach come off the catchiest, but the sextet even manages to swing, ever so gently, the Sabbath Prayer.
THE VILLAGE STOMPERS: NEW BEAT ON BROADWAY! (Epic). The Stompers are seven bright young musicians who a year and a half ago introduced in their best-selling Washington Square a hybrid something they call Folk-Dixie, with the accent on Dixie. Cheerfully applying their split personality to show tunes, they make Mack the Knife sound like a hillbilly and they almost slaughter People; but even the mayhem is jolly. Fiddler on the Roof sounds great in the Russian-Jewish-Tin-Pan-Alley-Folk-Dixie dialect.
CINEMA
HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE. Amiable nonsense about a buoyant bachelor (Jack Lemmon) who wakes up married to a girl in a million (Italy's Virna Lisi) and begins to contemplate the benefits of home, sweet home v. homicide, partly because his fastidious manservant (Terry-Thomas) views all women as household pests.
TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC. Using the actual words spoken during Joan's heresy trial in 1431, this spare, ascetic film transforms history into a unique and timeless drama that often looks like a 15th century news special.
MARRIAGE-ITALIAN STYLE. Vice is hilarious and virtue seems pretty earthy in Director Vittorio De Sica's half-humorous, half-sentimental account of how a Neapolitan harlot (Sophia Loren) fights and wins a lifelong battle to take a rake (Marcello Mastroianni).
NOTHING BUT A MAN. As hero of a sincere, forceful drama that avoids both preachiness and skin-deep sociology, a confused young Negro (Ivan Dixon) discovers what it means to be a black man in America.
THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG. Young love brightens up a shabby French seaport, where Director Jacques Demy sets everyone singing while he wistfully paints the town red, blue, and other sparkling primary colors.
ZORBA THE GREEK. Anthony Quinn gloriously reaches the peaks of Nikos Kazantzakis' novel about a rip-roaring old brute who teaches a timid essayist (Alan Bates) to get out of his books and into real trouble.
WORLD WITHOUT SUN. The fear and fascination of day-to-day existence in an experimental tank town under the Red Sea are coolly recorded in this eerie, colorful documentary by Oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau (The Silent World).
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE ORDWAYS, by William Humphrey. From memorable tragedy (Home from the Hill), Humphrey turns to delightful comedy, chronicling the fun and foibles of a huge East Texas clan in what is perhaps the best humorous novel since Faulkner's The Reivers.