Cinema: May 25, 1962

Joan of the Angels? Made in Poland and based loosely on the case of the erotic nuns of Loudun in 17th century France, this picture is a nearly successful work of art, relentlessly ambiguous, ultimately confusing, but strong and moving.

A Taste of Honey. Shelagh Delaney, Britain’s angry young ma’am, tells a story of the Lancashire slums with concussive humor, dramatic drive, and a melancholy flair for the poetry of wasted lives.

Jules and Jim. Two young men and a girl love, laugh and write poetry in Paris 50 years ago, in a film that is a clutter of inconsequence transformed by imagination, as a trash heap is transformed by moonlight.

The Counterfeit Traitor. Incessantly exciting story of an Allied agent in Sweden during World War II.

Sweet Bird of Youth. Tennessee Williams’ so-soporific play becomes a fast, smart, squalid movie melodrama that offers its customers three of the year’s top film performances, by Paul Newman, Geraldine Page and Ed Begley.

Last Year at Marienbad. An experimental enigma of the screen, worked out by French Director Alain Resnais and Novelist-Scenarist Alain Robbe-Grillet, in which past, present and future are refracted endlessly like the image in a child’s kaleidoscope.

Five Finger Exercise. A perspicuous and painful study of a family that has risen from rags to wretchedness.

State Fair. Composer Richard Rodgers has added new songs to this remake of the 1945 film, in which the corn is somehow taller and the color louder.

Moon Pilot. A skillful Walt Disney comedy about nervous astronauts and slow-thinking FBI men.

The Horizontal Lieutenant. A dogface farce that may not fracture any funny bones but manages to pile up a bumper crop of nuts on a Pacific island. It stars Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton, who are surely the most promising romanticomedians around.

Bell’ Antonio. An Italian film that seriously and discreetly discusses a case of impotence.

Only Two Can Play. Peter Sellers is perfectly hilarious as a lubricous bookworm, a wan don who thinks he is a Don Juan.

Through a Glass Darkly. Ingmar Bergman’s thematic analysis of four lives, as subtle as Wild Strawberries but solider in substance.

The Night. A marriage dissected by Director Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy’s great pathologist of morals.

Lover Come Back. Rock Hudson and Doris Day as adman and adwoman in a stock situation comedy worked out as smoothly as a chess problem: opening gambit, queen’s sacrifice, knight rooked, mate.

TELEVISION

Wed., May 23Howard K. Smith: News & Comment (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).* Summary of the week’s most important items, with analysis. David Brinkley’s Journal (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). A melancholy look at the decline of movie theaters.

Thurs., May 24

CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). World trade and the pending trade-expansion bill, including interviews with President Kennedy and former President Eisenhower.

Sat., May 26

Saturday Night at the Movies (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). James Mason and Jessica Tandy in The Desert Fox, the story of Field Marshal (The Desert Fox) Rommel.

Sun., May 27

Lamp Unto My Feet (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.). Excerpts from Eugene Ionesco’s play, The Killer, a study of rational man’s impotence in the face of brute force, followed by conversations on the Theater of the Absurd.

Look Up and Live (CBS, 10:30-11 a.m.). Passover ends with the Jewish festival of Shabuoth, celebrated here with songs and readings by Folk Singer Martha Schlamme.

Accent (CBS, 1-1:30 p.m.). “Eero Saarinen: An Appreciation,” a photo tour of Saarinen’s monuments. (Repeat).

Directions ’62 (ABC. 3-3:30 p.m.). A discourse on theology and verse by five Roman Catholic poets (Ned O’Gorman, Kathleen Raine, Leone Adams, Robert Lax, John Fandel).

Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The A.A.U. gymnastic championships broadcast from the Seattle fair.

DuPont Show of the Week (NBC. 10 11 p.m.). A storm’s eye view of Hurricane Carla at work on Galveston, Texas.

Tues. May 29

Special (ABC. 10-11 p.m.). Jerry Lewis in a one-man show.

THEATER

On Broadway

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum stars Zero Mostel as a Roman slave in a racy adaptation of the plays of Plautus. Vaudeville and burlesque routines give this musical a high hilarity quotient, and six near-nudettes prance appealingly amid the golden corn.

A Thousand Clowns, by Herb Gardner.

To conform or not to conform—that is the shopworn question that this ingratiating comedy answers with fresh and infectious humor. The cast, headed by Jason Robards Jr. and Sandy Dennis, is great fun to be with.

The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. This New York Drama Critics Circle prize play carries four desperate people toward self-acceptance and self-transcendence. Margaret Leighton, who acts with the purity of light, has won a Tony Award for her performance.

A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt. A resonant drama of probity about probity. Paul Scofield’s playing of wise, witty Sir Thomas More is a theatrical act of grace. Voted best foreign play of the year by the New York Drama Critics Circle.

Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, treats God and man as back-fence neighbors, more humorous than awesome, more colloquial than eloquent, but there are glints of religious fervor in Chayefsky’s firmament. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a delightful spoof of officemanship. Org Man Robert Morse conducts an irresistible, evening-long romance with himself as he scrambles up a corporate hill of bean-brains. Voted best musical of the year by the New York Drama Critics Circle.

Off Broadway

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, by Arthur Kopit. Mom never had it so bad. Amid the Venus flytraps, Barbara Harris glistens as a hilariously voracious sexling.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Jenny Lind, The Swedish Nightingale,

by Gladys Denny Schultz. Though the author oversentimentalizes her heroine, this account of the cold, superbly gifted soprano who became P. T. Barnum’s greatest exhibit is absorbing nevertheless.

The Wax Boom, by George Mandel. A tense symbolic war novel explores the near insanity that afflicts men too long exposed to combat.

Shut Up, He Explained, selections from Ring Lardner edited by Babette Rosmond and Henry Morgan. Tidbits likely to whet the appetite for a full-scale revival of America’s greatest comic sharpshooter.

Patriotic Gore, by Edmund Wilson. In the hands of erudite Author Wilson, a series of essays on the literature of the Civil War becomes an important and exciting work of history.

The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Harry T. Moore. Epistolary barbs and insights from the pen of a pungent novelist-poet.

Ship of Fools, by Katherine Anne Porter. A brilliant and often savage account of life on a prewar German cruise ship becomes a universal study in human folly.

George, by Emlyn Williams. Playwright and Actor Williams shows himself to be a thoroughly readable autobiographer in this wry account of his Welsh boyhood.

Scott Fitzgerald, by Andrew Turnbull. A staid but exhaustive and useful biography of Fitzgerald, from this side of paradise to the far side of crackup.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Ship of Fools, Porter (1, last week)

2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (3)

3. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (2)

4. The Bull from the Sea, Renault (6)

5. Devil Water, Seton (4)

6. The Fox in the Attic, Hughes (5)

7. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (8)

8. Captain Newman, M.D., Rosten (7)

9. Hornstein’s Boy, Traver

10. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter

NONFICTION

1. The Rothschilds, Morton (1)

2. Calories Don’t Count, Taller (2)

3. My Life in Court, Nizer (3)

4. In the Clearing, Frost (6)

5. The Guns of August, Tuchman (4)

6. Six Crises, Nixon (5)

7. The Last Plantagenets, Costain (8)

8. Scott Fitzgerald, Turnbull (10)

9. The Making of the President 1960, White (7)

10. CIA: The Inside Story, Tully (9)