Ballad of a Soldier (in Russian). The vehemently original, vibrantly beautiful, richly humorous story of a 19-year-old soldier's furlough trip across battle-churned Russia is the best Soviet film since the war.
The Grass Is Greener. A champagne comedy pressed from one of Britain's choicest sour grapes--those beastly rich Americans--with Gary Grant playing an earl who tries to save his wife from a fate worse than death, i.e., Robert Mitchum.
Make Mine Mink. Another suitably dotty but amiable bit of British nonsense, casting Comedian Terry-Thomas as a Robin Hoodish retired major who masterminds (and sometimes absentminds) a fur-shop larceny.
The Angry Silence. A sort of industrial miracle play in which Everyman finds salvation through a grease-smeared redeemer in the guise of a union-bucking machinist.
Tunes of Glory. A superior piece of entertainment, thanks to brilliant performances by Alec Guinness as an up-from-the-ranks Scottish colonel waging the internecine peace of barracks life, and John Mills as a fatally weak martinet.
Among other good recent offerings: Exodus, The Sundowners, The Magnificent Seven, and The Virgin Spring.
TELEVISION
Tues., Jan. 17 The Art Carney Show (NBC, 10-11 p.m.).* In a revue entitled "Everybody's Doin' It," Lee Remick and Alice Ghostley join Carney in a humorous look at that overpublicized modern bugaboo, conformity. Color.
Wed., Jan. 18 Du Pont Show of the Month (CBS, 8:30-10 p.m.). An adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda, in which Christopher Plummer doubles as King of Ruritania and Cousin Rudolph. With Farley Granger, Inger Stevens and Nancy Wickwire.
Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "Medicine Man" swallows another bitter pill--the fly-by-night maker of phony Pharmaceuticals.
Thurs., Jan. 19
CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The House Rules Committee looks to the New Frontier, when Howard K. Smith interviews Chairman Howard W. Smith of Virginia and two of his members--Missouri Democrat Richard Boiling and Ohio Republican Clarence Brown.
Fri., Jan. 20
The Presidential Inaugural Parade and Ceremonies (NBC, ABC and CBS from 11 a.m.). More commentators than Kennedys as each network throws in its anchormen and a horde of ancillaries. For the parade portion, beginning at approximately 2 p.m., NBC will shift to color cameras.
You're in the Picture (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). The premiere of a Jackie Gleason show, in which guest panelists, their heads protruding from backdrops of art reproductions or historical incidents, guess the picture they're in.
The Inaugural Ball (CBS and NBC, ll:15-midnight). Sidelights and celebrities from Washington's National Guard Armory, with NBC supplementing its regulars with Actress Dina Merrill.
Sat., Jan. 21
The Nation's Future (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). Hugh Gaitskell and Thomas E. Dewey debating "Should the West Modify Its Policy Toward the Soviet Union?"
Sun., Jan. 22
Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic (CBS, 4-5:30 p.m.). Romantic music from Beethoven to Mahler.
Close-Up (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Interviews with the Premiers of Nigeria and Togoland, plus Kenya's Tom Mboya, are part of "The Red and the Black," a study of the East-West battle for influence in Africa.
Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). "The Ravens Remain," the story of the London blitz.
Mon., Jan. 23
The Americans (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Inevitably, the network launches a weekly Civil War drama series, packaged by M-G-M and starring Darryl Hickman as a Union soldier. Historian Henry Steele Commager serves as consultant.
THEATER
Midway in a middling Broadway season, the best new plays include All the Way Home, a life-affirming adaptation of James Agee's Knoxville chronicle, A Death in the Family; Advise and Consent, a superficial but suspenseful political melodrama based on the Allen Drury bestseller; A Taste of Honey, an episodic but unblinkingly truthful first play about a desperately lonely girl, brilliantly performed by Joan Plowright; and Period of Adjustment, a comedy in which Tennessee Williams turns marital counselor in an unprecedentedly optimistic work that displays more deftness than depth. Among last season's worthiest survivors: Lillian Hellman's corrosive Toys in the Attic; Paddy Chayefsky's sensitive, mystic and comic The Tenth Man; and The Miracle Worker, the superbly acted story of young Helen Keller and her teacher.
Of the musicals, Camelot is very much worth seeing for "the splendor of its sets, the best of its Lerner-Loewe tunes and its stars, Richard Burton and Julie Andrews; Do Re Mi, with a story of jukebox racketeering that is mere rundown Runyon, is almost saved by Stars Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker; and the best of the lot may well be the pert, piquant French import, Irma La Douce, with delightful Dynamo Elizabeth Seal. The holdovers--not counting the perennials such as My Fair Lady and The Music Man--are topped by Fiorello!, an unpretentious reminiscence of the Little Flower, and Bye Bye Birdie, a sprightly spoof of an Elvis-type monster.
In a class by itself: An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, a satirical potpourri of skits and improvisations.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Parodies, an Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm and After, edited by Dwight Macdonald. With wit and a leaven of malice, the editor has compiled and annotated the best collection yet of that curious art in which the pen is wielded while the thumb is fixed firmly to the nose.
Among the Dangs, by George P. Elliott. Whether the author tells of a weird anthropological expedition or a totalitarian solution to the race problem, his excellent short stories have this in common: they were not written to soothe.
Shadows on the Grass, by Isak Dinesen. This aristocratic Danish author of superior Gothic romances has fashioned a nonfictional still life, elegiac in mood, diamantine in craft, of her past as a coffee planter in Kenya.
The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken. Well cut, correct and a trifle oldfashioned, the author's short stories deal brilliantly with inward torment but less well with events; the best of them are of a very high order indeed.
To a Young Actress, edited by Peter Tompkins. More letters by G.B.S., this batch directed at an American actress, Molly Tompkins, for whom he tried without much success to provide a Socialist's Guide to Being an Intelligent Woman.
The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, by Don Russell. The author assiduously shovels away dime-novel apocrypha and discovers, surprisingly enough, an authentic and often amazing frontiersman.
Greek Gods and Heroes, by Robert Graves. A Zeus Who for young readers, written with charm and skill.
Winnie Ille Pu, by A.A. Milne, translated into Latin by Alexander Lenard. Children who read Latin will find the adventures of Pu, Porcellus and lor delightful, and laggards who trotted through Caesar years ago will derive much pleasure, or at least prestige, if the book is seen about the house.
Best Sellers
FICTION
3. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (3)
4. Decision at Delphi, Maclnnes (6)
5. Sermons and Soda-Water, O'Hara (5)
6. The Dean's Watch, Goudge (4)
7. The Lovely Ambition, Chase (9)
8. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (7)
9. Mistress of Mellyn, Holt
10. The Nylon Pirates, Monsarrat (8)
NONFICTION
1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (1)
2. The Waste Makers, Packard (3)
3. The Snake Has AH the Lines, Kerr (2)
4. The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War (4)
5. Born Free, Adamson (6) 6. Vanity Fair, ed. by Amory and Bradlee (5) 7. Who Killed Society? Amory (8)
8. Baruch: The Public Years (7)
9. The Politics of Upheaval, Schlesinger (9)
10. The Worlds of Chippy Patterson, Lewis
* All times E.S.T. -Position on last week's list.
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