Presumably people are lost in linear thought these days which is too bad, because in Cambridge, this weekend--for once--the possibilities for oceanic consciousness are, well--oceanic.

To start, there's a whole slew of old Hollywood gems. Grand Hotel, 1932 with Garbo, sums up a lot about the Golden Age--it's crummy, really, but irresistable because there's just so much glam. With the Barrymore's, Joan Crawford and Wallace Beery. Along with it at Quincy House is Astaire and Rogers' Top Hat, whence cometh "Cheek to Cheek" and others. Many people's favorite--not mine, but wonderful by definition. Music is Irving Berlin's.

There's much more: like Frank Capra's racy and extremely successful It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and an incomparable bedroom scene. Worth nothing that the famous Leg is not Claudette Colbert's. Also at the Science Center is the Laughton version of Mutiny on the Bounty, infinitely better than the later Tahitian Treat model with Marlon Brando and the entire native population of the South Pacific. Bagie's at the Brattle, it being that time again, and Citizen Kane, at the Orson Welles as of Sunday, is always worth a look, even though the Rosebud bit looks sillier and sillier with every viewing.

At the Harvard Square are two of the finest examples of a great genre--the French domestic comedy of the middle class: Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart are Claude Berri's Le Sex Shop. Both are the kind of whimsy that'll have you grinning idiotically when you leave, and Malle's, about an incestual mother/son relationship, has great sensitivity as well.

Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel's surrealistic Un Chien Andalou is at Kirkland House along with some other shorts, while Bergman's Shame--where the great director takes on death and war with his usual perception--heads a list of swedish films at Hilles. I.F. Stone's Weekly is being held over at the Welles, and it's reportedly the best documentary of the year, about a very admirable journalist.

When you've finished with these (or, if you will, and I hope you won't, the Bullwinkle cartoons, Dr. Zhivago or Take the Money and Run--when Sleeper in Boston is so much finer), you can take in Gimme Shelter, midnight at the Orson Welles: the greatest rock movie ever made, by far. It's worth trying to understand Altamont--an incredibly powerful nightmare vision in this film--and the Stones perform throughout as only they can.