CREATING A MONSTER TV AND MOVIE INTEREST IN ADOLF HITLER PROVOKES CRITICS AND RAISES UNCOMFORTABLE HISTORICAL QUESTIONS.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

Meet Adolf Hitler, human chameleon.

Depending on whose take you're buying into - and these days, there are a plethora of choices - Hitler was a frustrated artist (the film ``Max''), a closeted homosexual (``The Hidden Hitler''), the product of a mother fixation and an abusive childhood (``Hitler: Origins of Evil''), a mesmerizing employer to a devoted secretary (``Blind Spot'') or the zany star of a musical comedy that bears his name (``The Producers'').

It's not as though Hitler has never been put on screen before. An appearance by the Fuhrer is practically a requirement for any World War II movie, and the character has been played by such actors as Alec Guinness, Anthony Hopkins, Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi. Since the end of the Cold War, film historians say that Hitler is a more easily digestible on-screen villain than, say, Joseph Stalin. And we're still probably too close to Sept. 11 for serious filmmakers to make Osama bin Laden a character in a film.

The new crop of Hitler fare, however, has Holocaust historians concerned that filmmakers are focusing too much on getting into the character's psyche, potentially at the expense of historical accuracy.

``I don't object to a film being done about Adolf Hitler, but tell the whole story, not half the story,'' says Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. ``You can't say that half a treatment ought to get in as Holocaust education. That's not good enough. This is somebody who nearly destroyed an entire civilization.''

Deborah Dwork, author of ``Holocaust: A History,'' echoes that criticism. ``I am interested in contemporary portrayals of Hitler, but they won't tell me anything about history,'' she says. ``They'll tell me about artistic understanding and popular culture.''

Like many other activists, Hier and Dwork are particularly concerned about the upcoming CBS miniseries ``Hitler: Origins of Evil,'' a project that has drawn so much preproduction criticism that network officials revised the script and planned to make a donation to a Jewish or Holocaust-related organization. Similarly, ``Max,'' the Lions Gate film produced by and starring John Cusack, had activists condemning any attempts at humanizing Hitler. The Jewish Defense League urged a boycott on Lions Gate and denounced ``Max'' before the film was even released.

Ultimately, said JDL spokesman Brett Stone, the Jewish community told the JDL to back off. JDL officials were promised a screening and input on the film's marketing, but it never happened, he said.

``As a Jew, to me, it's offensive to make a movie where Hitler is a fictional character,'' says Stone, who has not seen ``Max.'' ``Hitler is such a heinous figure in history. He's not somebody we think of that should be portrayed at some writer's interpretation. What he did is clear. We don't need to make up stories that humanize him.''

From scholarly to silly

Detractors' criticism notwithstanding, a handful of Hitler-themed projects purport to be based on historically accurate material. ``Hitler: Origins of Evil'' which stars Robert Carlyle as Hitler, is based on Ian Kershaw's biography ``Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris.''

The new documentary ``Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary'' centers on the reflections of the late Traudl Junge, who served as Hitler's private secretary at the end of his life. An HBO documentary in development is based on German history professor Lothar Machtan's book ``The Hidden Hitler,'' which suggests Hitler was gay.

As in vogue as Hitler stories appear to be, pitching a fictional project around the man appears to be a good way to get doors slammed in your face. Unless, that is, you're Mel Brooks, whose smash musical version of his own 1968 film ``The Producers'' comes to the Pantages Theatre in April. Jason Alexander and Martin Short will star as the pair of schemers looking to get rich with a Hitler-themed musical.

``The Producers'' is, after all, a satire. Scheming would-be showmen Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom seek to defraud potential investors by getting them to invest in a sure-fire flop: the Holocaust musical ``Springtime for Hitler.''

As tasteless as the ``Springtime for Hitler'' idea may be, the fact that Brooks expects it to die horribly lets Brooks off the hook, according to Dwork. ``Mel Brooks has explained his view of laughter: that the most minimizing act of one human being to another is to laugh at him. Not spit on him or smack him, but laugh at him,'' says Dwork. ``While I don't know if Mel Brooks is right, I absolutely respect his position on that issue.''

Comedy has rules of its own. If you're playing it straight, you can expect resistance. ``Max'' writer/director Menno Meyjes nearly went bankrupt trying to get his film made. Steven Spielberg was attached to the project but later withdrew due to his connection to the Shoah Foundation.

``Everybody turned us down,'' says first-time director Meyjes, an Oscar nominee for his screenplay for ``The Color Purple.'' ``We had two things going for us: our producer Andras Hamori's tenacity and John Cusack's commitment to the film.''

In ``Max,'' Cusack plays Max Rothman, a Jewish gallery owner who befriends a penniless would-be artist - and fellow veteran - named Adolf Hitler. The film is set in 1918, and the young painter is simultaneously being wooed to be the spokesman of a developing political movement. Had Hitler (frighteningly played by Noah Taylor) possessed more talent or artistic discipline, the film posits, civilization might have been different.

``He had a choice. I'm obsessed by this notion,'' says Meyjes. ``If we were his lawyers, we'd say Hitler is not culpable. 'He was born a monster, he was raised a monster, and now he's doing monstrous things.' My feeling is he chose to become a monster, and that's what the film tracks.''

That is a more cerebral pill than many moviegoers will be willing to swallow, says Cusack.

`It would offend every Jew'

``It's not a terrifically open and progressive climate for film right now,'' Cusack says. ``There are only a few people out there who make films like this, and there was no way we could make this with a studio. I just think people felt that it was too intellectual, humanizing evil, that it would offend every Jew who was ever born.

``I could understand the fear. This wouldn't be my big box-office bet, but I think people will appreciate it.''

According to Cusack, the majority of ``Max'' bashers have been journalists and activists who have refused to even see the film or read the script. Dwork had not seen ``Max'' when she denounced attempts to ``exploit the media-genic Fuhrer'' in her essay ``Hitler as Pop Culture.'' She does plan to see the movie and the CBS miniseries when it airs in May.

``I have never seen a fictional work in which Hitler is a character which works for me. Which, in my view, gives the viewer or the reader a historically fair and accurate sense of the horror he unleashed on a whole continent,'' says Dwork, the Rose Professor of Holocaust History at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. ``I don't know if it can be done.''

There was a period during production of a 1996 film, ``The Empty Mirror'' - another Lions Gate release - when a number of crew members became concerned that they were working on a pro-Hitler film. Production wasn't halted, recalls writer-director Barry J. Hershey, but the tension and argument did cause obstacles.

``The Empty Mirror'' which starred the late Norman Rodway as Hitler and Joel Grey as Joseph Goebbels, depicted Hitler going through an imaginary self-examination after World War II, and encountering Eva Braun and Sigmund Freud in dream sequences.

``Anybody who would have read the script would know that it's not a pro-Hitler film,'' says Hershey. ``There are some people who, in very pronounced ways, want to see the world in terms of good and evil. Some people who saw 'The Empty Mirror' were very uncomfortable that we didn't come down and put him in the box that says pure evil.''

The ``Max'' creative team believes the public can handle evil, or can get into the mind of a morally reprehensible figure like Col. Kurtz of ``Apocalypse, Now'' or the protagonists of ``In Cold Blood.'' Things get dicier when the person in question is a historical figure. Hitler can be the shadowy, unseen figure of menace in spy novels, but if a story is told from his perspective ...

``If we think of him as just a monster, we relinquish responsibility, and think he's not like us,'' says Lynn Rapaport, associate professor of sociology at Pomona College. ``One of the big debates in history is whether, if it hadn't been Hitler, somebody else could have filled his shoes.''

Channeling Hitler

One day on the set of ``Max,'' the film's star, Noah Taylor, was looking for some direction and decided to cut to the chase.

``He turns to me and says, 'Look, mate, just tell me: more Fuhrer or less Fuhrer,' '' director Menno Meyjes recalls.

The soft-spoken Taylor, perhaps best-known for playing the young David Helfgott in ``Shine,'' suspected that taking on the psychological fury of the young Adolf Hitler would take its toll. Building the character was, for Taylor, an exercise in reverse anger management.

``I just thought about the physical process of pumping yourself up with anger every day, with this rapid shallow breathing,'' says Taylor, 33.

Taylor kept a scrapbook full of horrific stories and images that he would refer to when he needed to get himself into Hitler mode. He would try to hold on to any slight or mishap - ``someone cutting you off in traffic, not having the right pack of cigarettes'' - long enough to let it fester.

Taylor's main inspiration was a photograph of Hitler as an 8-year-old boy staring, arms crossed and angrily, at the camera.

``I wanted to kind of work against the polished, choreographed Hitler and have a a really ratty version,'' says Taylor. ``It was freeing in that I didn't feel like I had obligation to doing a straight historical biopic.''

- Evan Henerson

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Photo:

John Cusack, left, committed to director Menno Meyjes' ``Max,'' with Noah Taylor, right, playing a young Hitler. ``There was no way we could make this with a studio,'' Cusack says.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer

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Channeling Hitler (see text)