What was going on when I was born?

G ive or take a few months, this year is the 25th anniversary of the Nouvelle Vague, that New Wave of young French filmmakers who, first by their sometimes outrageous statements and then by the extraordinary films they made to support those statements, forever changed the look of - as well as the way we look at - movies. Their new criticism, the sweeping and, at the time, revolutionary politiques des auteurs, announced that all films, even the most ghastly collaborations, could be seen as the work of a single artistic sensibility, that is, of the director-as-''author.'' Their films, made on limited budgets in the real world outside the walls of the studios, turned poverty into visual assets. They came up with new editing tricks, including the jump-cut that functions as cinema shorthand. They rediscovered others - such as the ''iris,'' by which a portion of an image can be isolated on an otherwise black screen - that had been abandoned as old-fashioned with the arrival of the talkies. It was almost as if films were being reinvented.

JERUSALEM T HE full dimensions of the Israeli-American setback in Lebanon have not yet been realized but the outlines are being drawn with growing clarity. The implications go beyond Lebanon; they involve the capacity of the United States and Israel to influence the complex flow of events in the Middle East. Many Israelis are beginning to see their involvement in Lebanon as a grave failure of perception - the mistaken belief that applying superior military force to a labyrinth of ancient feuds would bring desired results. The error, which the Americans also seemed to embrace for a time, has left both countries weakened, at least in the eyes of governments and factions in the region.

Neither the Canadiens nor the Forum cause visitors much fear these days. The Canadiens, with 21 Stanley Cup banners hanging from their rafters, have lost 30 games this season - their most since the 1950-51 season. And they have lost 15 in the hallowed Forum, a team record. ''We have gone from a team that consistently had more than 100 points in a season to one that this year will finish with 75-80,'' said Bob Gainey, the Canadiens' captain. Tonight, a day after the dismissal of their coach, Bob Berry, and with Jacques Lemaire directing behind their bench, the Canadiens picked up 2 points, beating the Rangers, 7-4. The victory once again had the Forum rocking.

I T was sometime around 1800 when Hachaliah Bailey put Somers on the map by importing an elephant, thought by local historians to be the first such beast ever to cross America's shores. ''It was here the American circus began,'' Florence Oliver, the Town Historian, said recently. Several buildings in Somers' core area testify to that period and give people like Mrs. Oliver a sense of pride and identity that International Business Machines and Pepsico cannot provide. But like others in Westchester, history buffs in Somers are worried about the possibility that proposed new development near these sites would alter the historic atmosphere that makes their hamlet unusual.

I*SIT surrounded by memoirs written by the New York intellectuals of the period between the 1930's and the 1970's - William Barrett's ''The Truants,'' William Phillips's ''A Partisan View,'' Irving Howe's ''A Margin of Hope,'' Irving Kristol's ''Reflections of a Neo-Conservative'' (only a small part of which is memoir). These books are, of course, only a small part of the recent flood of materials on the New York intellectuals. There are also two books of memoirs by Norman Podhoretz, excellent essays by Lionel Abel, scholarly works such as William L. O'Neill's ''A Better World - The Great Schism: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals,'' Nathan Glazer is a professor of education and sociology at Harvard University. His most recent book is ''Ethnic Dilemmas, 1964-1982.'' and others. And I am considering a question raised by Denis Donoghue in a paper he read at Columbia University last fall at the Lionel Trilling Seminar on the New York intelligentsia: Why are American intellectuals so different from their British counterparts?

A group of determined West Side residents who opposed the development of a tall, though legal, mid-block apartment building on West 68th Street have won a compromise with the developer. They will now see an 11-story building, rather than one of 19 stories, rise on their block between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.

Amid shifting political fortunes, the major Democratic Presidential aspirants are preparing for a New Hampshire primary vote that could help decide the length of the nomination contest. Most of the campaign strategists here for the first primary of the 1984 campaign on Tuesday agree that a landslide victory by former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, on the heels of his success in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, would position him to nail down the nomination in short order. Peril and Opportunity However, Mr. Mondale's advisers acknowledge he is the first choice of only about 35 percent of those likely to vote in the primary in a state with a strong history of upsetting front-runners. Pollsters in other campaigns contend that Mr. Mondale's support is in the midst of a slide, from a recent peak of around 40 percent to the low 30's.

In the first days after Micheal Ray Richardson's controversial reinstatement last December, the Nets tried to shield him from the pressures surrounding his return by closing his first practice session and by keeping him out of a game against his former team, the Knicks. Tonight, before the Nets' first sellout crowd of the season, Richardson continued a string a strong performances that showed he no longer needed to be protected. Making his first start of the season, Richardson scored a season-high 22 points, grabbed 8 rebounds and made a key steal against the Knicks in the final minutes of the Nets' third consecutive victory, 117-104, in front of 20,149 fans. The game was testimony not only to the Nets' depth, but also to Richardson's strength. He played 40 minutes and scored in double figures for the 11th time in his last 12 games.

CONCORD, N.H. I N a perfect world, two mainly Republican states that will choose only 2 percent of the 3,933 delegates to this year's Democratic National Convention would have little to do with naming the party's Presidential nominee. But in the highly imperfect world of practical politics, Iowa and New Hampshire are demonstrating once again why they play an outsized role in the nominating process. Iowa's caucuses have been trendsetters since 1972, and since 1952 no candidate has won the Presidency without first winning his party's New Hampshire primary. This year, the fast-starting, ''frontloaded'' campaign calendar is further inflating the already exaggerated importance of these two states.

The Board of Education and the city's Schools Chancellor are planning to submit legislation in Albany to eliminate the role of the Board of Examiners in the licensing of principals, assistant principals and other supervisors. The proposal, according to the Chancellor, Anthony J. Alvarado, is an attempt to end more than a decade of disputes and legal challenges over the examining board's tests for licensing school administrators. Under the plan, the city tests would be eliminated. Prospective supervisors would become eligible for jobs on the basis of a new statewide test for all teachers, supervisors and guidance counselors seeking state certification. The state testing, which is independent of action taken in the city, begins in September.

STAMFORD C LUTCHING a clipboard, Phil Ragozzino paced the sideline near the Westhill High School bench, calling out plays and occasionally chastising his players during a basketball game against archrival Stamford High. Nearby, Lou Orlando was a bit more reserved, though highly vocal, as he assisted his co-coach and exhorted the Westhill players before a near-capacity crowd. This was a special night, because it marked the debut of Mr. Ragozzino and Mr. Orlando as unlikely co- coaches in the Westhill gymnasium in the next-to-last game of the season. That Westhill lost 80-57 to Stamford came as no surprise, since Stamford High is one of the strongest teams in the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference, while Westhill is one of the weakest. What was surprising was that Mr. Ragozzino and Mr. Orlando coexisted as well as they did, since they had been coaching rivals for years. In fact, they were serving as co-coaches only because of a ruling by a Superior Court judge.

Rapidly accumulating evidence indicates that forests throughout the Eastern United States are in decline, perhaps seriously. There is no scientific consensus on the cause and significance of the decline, but evidence gathered so far points to manmade pollution as the chief suspect. Some scientists are worried that some of the symptoms are similar to those that eventually led to a dramatic decline in Central European forests. Decline on Southern Peaks New research has shown that some species of softwood trees are losing their foliage, dying and failing to reproduce at high elevations in the Southeastern part of the Appalachian chain. Until recently, observations of forests throughout the country had found such problems only in the Northeast.