BROKEN LIVES YEARNING TO REGAIN HOPE IN `TRUCE'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Primo Levi's ``The Truce'' is a classic memoir, a stirring and specific chronicle of one man's long, strange journey home from the Holocaust. Now it's been brought to the screen with respect and occasional magic by Italian director Francesco Rosi (``Three Brothers,'' ``Christ Stopped at Eboli''), with John Turturro as the chemist from Turin who became one of the 20th century's greatest writers.

The film's release comes at a felicitous time, on the heels of the Oscar-winning documentary ``The Long Way Home.'' Both films address the problems that faced Holocaust survivors immediately after the war, and they make remarkable companion pieces. While ``Home'' emphasizes how the hopelessness of the Jews' postwar situation ultimately led to the creation of Israel, ``Truce,'' while acknowledging the same awful conditions, is about the tortuous rebirth of individual hope.

Shortly after the Germans abandoned Auschwitz in the winter of 1945, Levi and his fellow prisoners faced their Red Army liberators feeling, in his words, ``lost, empty, atrophied; unfit for our newfound freedom.'' Levi's attitude matched the landscape they were about to face. Devastated and chaotic, with what resources and transportation there were dedicated to the still-raging war effort, Eastern Europe may no longer have been a killing field, but it was hardly a place where survival came easily.

Initially hooking up with a selfish but shrewd Greek (``Before the Rain's'' Rade Serbedzija), the bookish Levi learns a few vital tips before finally finding a group of fellow Italians. The ultimate outsiders in this blasted no man's land - their Russian overseers can't decide whether to treat them as friends or former enemies - all they want to do is go home.

But that's easier wished than done. First, there's incarceration in transit camps - hardly death camps, but prisons nonetheless. It is here that Levi begins to recover, falling in (frustrated) love with a Russian nurse and part-time hooker played by the radiant Agnieszka Wagner. When word of Berlin's fall reaches them, the Russians stage an exuberant celebration and invite their Italian charges. Here, Levi experiences joy for the first time since his liberation.

And so it goes, as a series of administrative snafus compounded by ruined rail lines move the Italians east instead of west, farther from home and deep into the Ukraine. But while struggle ensues, so does idleness, and the latter proves a blessing. With time on their hands, the survivors reacquaint themselves with music, nature, their capacity for compassion - in other words, recapture the human dignity that was so long denied them.

Rosi strikes a fine balance between pain and promise here; the film earns every moment of uplift. Sometimes it works a little too hard. Luis Bacalov's musical score tends to the emphatic at times when subtlety would be more appropriate. And although Turturro's performance is fine overall, there are moments he plays too naive for someone who's been through what Levi suffered.

But these are minor flaws in what is otherwise a great and necessary edition to Holocaust cinema. ``The Truce'' is a tribute to the marvel of regeneration in the face of dispiriting odds. It shows us just how, given the barest of chances, people go about choosing hope over despair.

In 1987, Primo Levi took his own life.

THE FACTS

The film: ``The Truce'' (R; violence, language, sex, nudity, children in jeopardy).

The stars: John Turturro, Massimo Ghini, Rade Serbedzija, Agnieszka Wagner.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Francesco Rosi. Written by Rosi, Tonino Guerra, Stefano Rulli and Sandro Petraglia, based on Primo Levi's book. Produced by Leo Pescarolo and Guido De Laurentiis. Released by Miramax Films.

Running time: One hour, 57 minutes.

Playing: Town Center 5, Encino; Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

Our rating: Three and One Half Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Having survived a Nazi death camp, Primo Levi (John Turturro) rediscovers life in ``The Truce.''