Television, Theater, Records, Cinema, Books: Mar. 18, 1966

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FLOWERS ON THE WALL (Columbia), a catchy and ironic song about a left-behind lover ("Countin' flowers on the wall,/ That don't bother me at all") was taken immediately into the repertory of the rock-'n'-roll set, but most of the other songs in this album (This Ole House, The Whiffenpoof Song) will appeal to other audiences. The four Statler Brothers, who began by singing Gospel at tent meetings in the South, specialize in country music.

THE 4 SEASONS' GOLD VAULT OF HITS (Philips). It's not only the sound but the sentiments of the Seasons that are so durable. Never mind if the quartet seems to whine. Its members are chroniclers of love affairs nixed, by parents ("My folks won't let me") and hexed by small allowances ("Think what your family would say to a poor boy like me!").

CINEMA

THE GROUP. Under the expert tutelage of Director Sidney Lumet, eight captivating young actresses rediscover the Roosevelt era in an irresistible drama based on Mary McCarthy's bitchy, college-bred bestseller about what happened to Vassar's class of '33 after commencement day. Joan Hackett, Jessica Walter, Shirley Knight and Joanna Pettet are the most active alumnae.

THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET. This poignant Czech drama hurls the question of universal guilt into a tranquil but non-occupied Slovakian village in 1942. The case concerns a Chaplinesque little nobody (Josef Króner) who, because he is an Aryan, is put in charge of the business, and the fate, of a shiningly innocent old Jewish shopkeeper (Ida Kamińska).

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. A rare Biblical film, made with nonprofessional actors and a script based wholly on Scripture, this modest, unassuming drama on the life of Christ is the work of Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian Communist.

KING AND COUNTRY. Injustice triumphs in Director Joseph Losey's story about a doomed World War I deserter (Tom Courtenay) and the officer (Dirk Bogarde) who fights to save him.

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX. Survival seems more urgent and exciting than usual when James Stewart, Richard Attenborough and a cynical crew crawl out of a plane crash in the Sahara and try to patch up their differences long enough to jerry-build a one-engined getaway plane from the wreckage.

OTHELLO. This filmed stage production stars Sir Laurence Olivier playing Shakespeare's Moor in blackface with inexhaustible virtuosity, though his characterization shifts at times from classic to calypso.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Omar Sharif and Julie Christie lead an exceptional cast through romance and revolution in Director David Lean's eye-filling facsimile of Pasternak's Russia.

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. The grey nether world of espionage, in a masterly re-creation by Director Martin Ritt (Hud), with Richard Burton as the disillusioned British agent on a cruelly subtle mission behind the Wall. Oskar Werner is his East German quarry.

BOOKS

Best Reading

GARIBALDI & HIS ENEMIES, by Christopher Hibbert. The vastly confused and equally grand career of Giuseppe Garibaldi, most romantic and most effective of those who waged the 19th century fight for Italian nationhood, is made crisply clear by British Historian Hibbert.