Television: Mar. 31, 1967

(3 of 4)

HAMP. John Wilson probes the conflict between discipline and compassion in an absorbing drama about a court-martial amidst the guns of World War I. Robert Salvio's portrayal of Private Hamp, a pebble of innocence crushed by the inexorable wheels of the military machine is both sensitive and touching.

AMERICA HURRAH, by Jean-Claude van Itallie, erupts on the theatrical landscape, pouring a lava of satire, comment and invective over some questionable aspects of modern life. Three playlets, Interview, TV and Motel, are inventively directed by Jacques Levy and Joseph Chaikin and interpreted by a flawless cast.

EH? is Henry Livings' broad farce that asks whether a young man with a merry-go-round mentality can find happiness in a square world.

CINEMA

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor frolic through Shakespeare's salty salvo in the war between the sexes, expertly directed by Italy's Franco Zeffirelli, who mixes bawd and brio on a Renaissance palette.

FALSTAFF. Orson Welles is both director and star of this amalgam of scenes from five of Shakespeare's history plays in which the Bard's "bombard" of a buffoon dominates the stage. The film flickers with the glitters of genius—amid great stony stretches of dullness and incoherence.

PERSONA. Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman's 27th film (and first in 2½ years) is a difficult but rewarding study of the psychological transference between an actress (Liv Ullman), who stops participating in life, and a nurse (Bibi Andersson), whose personality becomes enmeshed in that of her actress patient.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING. A moderately successful reincarnation of the 1961 Broadway musical hit, with Robert Morse and Rudy Vallee still excellent in their original roles.

THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE. Peter Weiss's play, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company and directed by Peter Brook, was the decade's most cinematic drama, as this film version of it brilliantly demonstrates.

DUTCHMAN. Subways are not for sleeping in this 55-minute rendering of LeRoi Jones's racial shocker that slams through the spectator like a jolt from the third rail.

YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW. Both the faults and freshness of the custard-pie plot and wacky camera work that tell the story of a youth cutting loose in Manhattan stem from the vast, undisciplined energy of Director Francis Ford Coppola—a new talent worth watching.

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Playwright Robert Bolt, Director Fred Zinnemann and Actor Paul Scofield have all been nominated for Academy Awards for their contributions to this excellent film about Sir Thomas More.

BOOKS

Best Reading

DISRAELI, by Robert Blake. An Oxford historian's excellent biography of the brilliant and irreverent Prime Minister whose gaiety and wit infuriated his Victorian contemporaries even as they illuminated the issues—and pretenses—of his time.