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THE HILL. Looking less like Bond and more like Gable, Sean Connery leads a handful of World War II unfortunates up and down a sandy pyramid in Director Sidney (The Pawnbroker) Lumet's forceful if conventional drama of men v. masters in a British army stockade.
REPULSION. With monstrous art, Writer-Director Roman Polanski wrings a classic chiller from the pulse-quickening misdeeds of a lovely French manicurist (Catherine Deneuve) whose problems seem reminiscent of that classic chiller Psycho.
THE RAILROAD MAN. The commonplace woes of everyman catch up with a devil-may-care railroad engineer in this family drama, made in 1956 by Director Pietro Germi (Divorce—Italian Style), who also plays the title role.
TO DIE IN MADRID. Such narrators as John Gielgud and Irene Worth add eloquent words to rare newsreel footage assembled by French Producer-Director Frédéric Rossif, who reshapes Spain's savage civil war of 1936-1939 into a powerful work of art.
DARLING. A dazzling playgirl (Julie Christie) learns how to succeed at jet-set fun-and-games, only to discover too late that to win can be to lose.
KING AND COUNTRY. Pity and terror are evoked by Director Joseph Losey (The Servant) and by Actor Tom Courtenay as a baffled army deserter en route to his execution during World War I.
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH. Blood, sand and social protest mix liberally in Director Francesco Rosi's angry drama about the rise and fall of a great bullfighter—played with impressive sting by Spanish Matador Miguel Mateo.
RAPTURE. A handsome fugitive (Dean Stockwell) shakes up the inhabitants of an old, dark house on a storm-ravaged coast. It has been done before, but Patricia Gozzi (the provocative waif of Sundays and Cybele) brightens the premises with a performance of remarkable subtlety.
BOOKS
Best Reading
CONVERSATIONS WITH BERENSON, recalled by Count Umberto Morra, translated by Florence Hammond. The late Bernard Berenson, the American critic who trained his eye on Italian Renaissance art and his tongue in the art of conversation, was both wise and wise guy when discussing painting, disseminating gossip, or commenting on life. Count Morra, one of Berenson's frequent guests, fortunately took notes.
PROUST: THE LATER YEARS, by George D. Painter. British Museum Curator George D. Painter concludes his rich biography of Marcel Proust in a second volume. Remembrance of Things Past is virtually required prior reading, but once that hurdle is out of the way, the reader is treated to a detailed and near-reverent account of Proust's agonizing labors over Remembrance, his homosexuality, and his pathetic transformation from social climber to neurotic recluse.
AN END TO CHIVALRY, by Tom Cole. This initial book of stories by a lecturer at M.I.T. is witty, charming, and dominated by a superb novella that casts a young American couple against the primordial background of Sicily, hurls them into the frenzy of a carnival, and delicately records their individual reactions.