The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 231

Screenplay The New Italian Cinema by R. T. Witcombe (Oxford: $19.95) is more than adequate proof that it is possible to write about foreign film with clarity, and with no judgment suspended because of the source of the film. Witcombe has done a wonderful job of making accessible the important Italian film makers at work from the 1960s to the present Antonioni, Ferreri, Bellochio, Cavani, Bolognini, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Fellini and half a dozen other major directors are dissected along with several lesser personalities. The dissection is rational, readable, and the parts make up more than the whole.

"Italian Cinema" can be forgiven such cute chap-: ter heads as because the book is a gem, a model for FOFFs and FOOFS Friends of Foreign Films and Friends of Old Films Monroe: Her Life in Pictures by James Spada with Some are made to be broken. And some can take a lifetime to keep. Reviewed by IrAvin R. Blacker minus and because the book is a gem, a model for other books by both FOFFs an FOOFS Friends of Foreign Films and Friends of Old Films Monroe: Her Life in Picture! by James Spada with George Zeno (Doubleday: $24.95, hardcover; $15.95. paperback) is the latest product of a necrophiliac industry.

The title fully describes the book, and the preface indicates the authors' point of view: "She was unable to accept happiness from one man, and the love of the masses was merely an empty, temporary tonic." Though the pictures are beautifully reproduced and captioned in panting prose, another collection of Monroe stills is as necessary as a new -conspiracy theory about her death. Requiescat in pace. Since the beginning of the feminist movement, the market has seen several good books on the subject of women and film. Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema by Annette Kuhn (Routledge Kegan Paul: $9.95, paperback) sadly is not one of them. In an attempt to bring profundity where clarity is needed instead, Kuhn has embraced the jargon of modern criticism.

Kuhn explains her own problem best: "Provocation, awareness and a critical attitude suggest in turn a transformation in spectator -text relations from the passive receptivity or unthinking suspension of disbelief fostered by dominant modes of address to a more active and questioning position." Whatever Became Of by Richart Lamparski (Crown: $8.95, paperback) is the eighth in a series telling the buff what happened to whom. Kamparski does not take the series seriously and does not expect his readers to. What does one say about Hollywood's Children by Raymond Strait (St. Martin's: The less the better. "Their parents were rich, famous and loved by millions.

But it wasn't always easy for chapter on Patricia Johnston Towers begins: "Patricia's parents Kathryn Grayson and Johnny Johnstonwere the epitome of Hollywood at its grandest a marriage made in heaven and dissolved with the help of the MGM moguls." A book of even less value is Unforgettable Holly wood by Nat Dallinger (Morrow: $20). A collection of 211 candid photographs taken by Dallinger, the book is explained by the captions: "Ricardo Montal-ban and wife Georgiana radiate their domestic bliss during an evening out at Club Mocambo." Written in breathless prose, "Unforgettable Hollywood" is eminently forgettable and unsuited for, the diabetic. One scans Great Radio Personalities in Historic -Photographs by Anthony Slide (Dover: $7.95, paperback) with a single question in mind: How valuable is a collection of stills of radio personalities with six-line bios? Orson Welles, in six lines, after studies of his work fill shelves? If the buyer has minimum expectations, he will not be disappointed. Fellini's Faces, edited by Christian Strich, foreword by R. D.

Laing, introduction by Federico Fellini (Holt, Rinehart Winston: $12.95, paperback) sounds like a wonderful idea. It isn't. The Old Master The gap between a Fellini film and a collection of stills is too great to bridge. "More than 300 vintage photographs," murkily reproduced, covering personalities and places located in what is geographically considered Hollywood are in The First Hundred Years by Bruce T. Torrence (New York Zoetrope: $24.95, hardcover; $15.95, paperback).

For the buff. And strangely i enough, of value to the urban historian. I 1 t. S. "brother she longed to marry, and the "sister" so unlike Lally.

yet so irrevocably bound to her. Lally Leeds is Catherine Gaskin's most unforgettable heroine and Promises her most ambitious novel. It sweeps from the elegant "Upstairs. Downstairs" world of Victorian England to the muddy trenches of World War I France to the Jazz Age high life of Gatsby's Long Island. From its first page it promises a family saga of irresistible drama and it delivers.

Lally was a tiny, ragged child of the slums when she fell under the wheels of Blackjack Pollock's carriage. But when the rich Yorkshireman took 1 her home to raise alongside his own son and daughter, her future suddenly glittered with the promise of wealth, happiness, and social position. Yet it was a different sort of promise made to her benefactor by Lally herself that was to shape her life: the pledge to always look after her new family, including the A NOVEL BY Catherineskin A LITERARY GUILD ALTERNATE READER DIGEST CONDENSED BOOKS SELECTION AT ALL BOOKSELLERS cIDOUBLEDAY.