short takes (1)

* Look for a major new film from Volker Schlondorff, one of West Germany's leading directors. Circle of Deceit is a drama about an uncommonly timely subject - tension in the Middle East, represented here by the tragic civil war in Lebanon. Bruno Ganz plays a journalist who goes to report on the conflict and stays to become personally involved. The screenplay, incidentally, was co-written by Schlondorff's wife, Margarethe von Trotta, whose own latest picture, ''Sisters,'' is due shortly on American screens.