Cinema: Feb. 2, 1962

Tender Is the Night. Director Henry King and Scenarist Ivan Moffat have made a slickly commercial, bleakly melancholy movie out of F. Scott Fitzgerald's story of a man emasculated by a fatal desire to please. Jason Robards Jr. plays the moral eunuch with All-American charm.

Murder, She Says. Margaret Rutherford, a British comedienne whose appearance suggests an overstuffed electric chair, comes on strong as a lady gumshoe in this adaptation of an Agatha Christie chiller, 4:50 from Paddington.

A View from the Bridge. Playwright Arthur Miller's attempt to find Greek tragedy in cold-water Flatbush makes about as much sense as building a brownstone Parthenon, but Director Sidney Lumet has filmed the play with pace and intelligence, and Actor Raf Vallone, as the stevedore hero, has the brute force of a cargo hook.

A Majority of One. A pleasant geriatric romance between a middle-aged Japanese textile tycoon (Alec Guinness) and a nice Jewish widow (Rosalind Russell) from New York City, with Lower-East-Side dishes of Jewish humor.

The Second Time Around. Debbie Reynolds plumes herself with horsefeathers in a comedy western that, saving her presence, would have been just one more prairie dog.

The Innocents. This psychiatric chiller, based on The Turn of the Screw, owes as much to Sigmund Freud as it does to Henry James, but the photography is wonderfully spooky and the heroine (Deborah Kerr) exquisitely kooky.

Throne of Blood. A grand, barbaric Japanization of Macbeth.

El Cid. The year's best superspectacle, based on the legend of the Spanish Lancelot.

TELEVISION

Wed., Jan. 31

The Bob Newhart Show (NBC, 10-10:30 p.m.).* Skits and monologues from a master comedian.

Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Drama-documentary about the work of missing-persons bureaus.

Fri., Feb. 2

International Showtime (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Circus Krone of Wilhelms-haven, Germany.

Bell Telephone Hour (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Soprano Joan Sutherland plus Janet Blair, Polly Bergen, et al.

Eyewitness to History (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). Walter Cronkite cronking out the top news story of the week.

Sun., Feb. 4

Sunday Sports Spectacular (CBS, 2:30-4 p.m.). A look at the best underwater spear fishermen and their web-footed friends, plus a talk with Jacques (The Silent World) Cousteau.

Directions '62 (ABC, 3-3:30 p.m.). Guest Earl Wrightson is featured in a program about the origins of church music.

Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). National ski-jumping championships at Fox River Grove, Ill.

Update (NBC, 5:30-6 p.m.). Robert Abernethy's news program for teenagers, shifted to a new time and day because of its popularity.

Meet the Press (NBC, 6-6:30 p.m.). Guest: American Motors President George Romney, who is a likely Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan.

Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). A synopsis of Puerto Rico's self-regeneration program, Operation Bootstrap.

FCC TV Hearings (NBC, 6:30-7 p.m.). Summary of Newton Minow's nibbles at the networks' top executives and their retorts, as developed during the previous week's testimony.