"Film Festivals"

The Plazza Theater, 11 Washington Street, Brookline, is currently running a series of films taken from the New York Times's annual ten-best lists of the last ten years. It's a pretty eclectic choice. After all, Bosley Crwowther reigned for six of those years, selling conventional quality to the New York pubic post, and condeming out of hand many genuinely inovative films. Then there was Renata Adler's stints "A Year in the Dark," as she put it--when the Times managed an abrupt turn-around and welcomed even the most nouveau of the New Wave output. For the last three years, we've been condemned to Vincent Canby--perhaps the least distinguished writer the Times has had in a major reviewing post, as much an industry gadfly as critic (perhaps accounted for by his training on Variety.

The selections of these three wildly different critics may not include the consistent best of the period, but certainly those films which were most talked about The series has been featured at several theaters in New York and one in Philadelphia and one surmises that at supplies excellent conversational fodder for cocktail parties

Tonight the Plaza is showing two by Truffaut The Wild Child, one of the best, an unsentimental detailed and narratively pure chronicle of Dr. Itard's attempts to tram a wolf child for human society in Enlightenment France, and The Bride Wore Black, one of his least, a stale tale of vengeance dedicated to Hitchcock Friday. Red Desert, middle period Antomennui Sarris's phrase) with beautiful color is paired with Juliet of the Spirits Felinis unsuccessful attempt to do for a frustrated house wife what 8 1/2 did for a castrated male artist leading as well into the garish technique of his. Satyricon phantasmagoria which plays Saturday doubled thank God. With one of the all time greats. Bergman's Passion of Anna the culmination of two decades of cinematic experiment, psychological examination and religious questioning. The only people who don't admire it are certain radical film critics who consider Bergman an "elitist." Sunday, it's back to staidsville, with the weepy Elvira Madigan and the better, if modest. Taste of Honey. (Call 566-0007 for times and further scheduling.)

At Cinema 733, on 733 Bovlston street in Boston. "Tomorrow's Film Classes Today" has been running all summer and probably will run through summers falls and winters yet to come. The theater's management has few pretensions towards critical judgment: all the films they play have been commercial hits, many of them directed at a "student audience" Tonight, Glmme Shelter, that voveur's eye view of Altamont, double bills with the stomach churning Permance Friday considerably improves the schedule, with Peter Yale's entertaining Bullitt, and Arthur Penn's archetypal American love story. Bonnir and Clyde Sunday and Monday make for a return to drek, as the Perrys's strident Diars of a Mad Housewife plays with polarishes slick and soulless Rosemary's Baby Call: 266-0342.)