CALENDAR

CAMBRIDGE

BRATTLE: The last two days, ever, of BEAT THE DEVIL. Go see it another time.

Starts Sunday: Elusive Robert Bresson's DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST will receive its American premiere. A tortuous film that explores a young priest's reactions to loneliness and hostility on his first parish assignment. Evenings at 5:30, 7:30, 9:30. TR 6-4226.

UNIVERSITY: The current double jeopardy continues uncomfortably: THE GRASS IS GREENER, with Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr; NEXT TO NO TIME, about which we will say (mercifully) next to nothing.

Starts Sunday: A lemon from Hollywood stars the actor of the same name and a fallen teen-idol, Rickie Nelson. It's called THE WACKIEST SHIP IN THE ARMY, and the title, believe you us, contains the funniest gag of the whole piece. Co-featured is a singularily unconvincing thriller, SECRET OF THE PURPLE REEF.

Thursday only. The third in the U.T.'s operatic sequence, this one Puccini's MADAME BUTTERFLY. In English.

Starts Friday. Two of Walt Disney's least objectionable full-length features: the one, an adaptation of that old stand-by, THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, with John (not Hayley this time) Mills, James MacArthur, Janet Monroe, and, yes Dorothy Maguire; the other, THE HOUND THAT THOUGHT HE WAS A RACOON, a cartoon that Disney at least thought was hilarious. See for yourself. UN 4-4580.

BOSTON

EXETER: Britain's new top comic, Peter Sellers dons a striped suit in TWO-WAY STRETCH, a double-barreled farce that lampoons thrillers and prison reform. With Wilfred Hyde-White. Evenings at 7:20, 9:10. KE 6-7067.

KENMORE: The U.S.S.R.'s latest export under the Lacey-Zarubin agreement, BALLAD OF A SOLDIER proves to be a tender if treacly treatment of Russian youngsters during the unparalleled suffering of the last war. Well worth seeing. Evenings at 7:10, 9:10.

TELEPIX: The latter two-thirds of Marcel Pagnol's epic trilogy of the 1930's is currently if all too briefly on view. FANNY will run through March 8. CESAR (which starts the 9th) will run till March 15. In toto, these are three of the funniest pictures ever made; Raimu, the French Charlie Chaplin, excels in what in retrospect must be called his greatest role. Your last chance in seven years. Evenings at 7:30, 9:30. HA 6-1115.