FEAR NOT THE BARD : PACINO'S QUEST TO MAKE SHAKESPEARE MORE ACTOR- AND AUDIENCE-FRIENDLY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Fear of Shakespeare.

For centuries, mere mortals have trembled at the imposing, impenetrable magnificence of the Bard. Normal folk could not expect to comprehend the poetry, to follow the complicated politics and history, to grasp the subtle complexities of the relationships and motivations, to know what the heck iambic pentameter is, for Pete's sake.

No, the key to all that alchemy was the sole possession of the gods of the theater. Those mighty talents, so brilliant and skillful, ever were and still remain the only guys who have Shakespeare figured out - and these days, they're making more movies than ever that rub our noses in it.

A filmed version of ``Twelfth Night'' opens today, we're getting a modernized, Miami-set rendition of ``Romeo and Juliet'' next Friday, and at the end of the year, the man who instigated the current Shakespeare glut, Kenneth Branagh, unleashes his full-text, three-hour-plus ``Hamlet.''

Feel intimidated enough? Well don't, because Al Pacino, of all people, has devoted a good part of the decade to demystifying Shakespeare, and a whole lot more about the mysterious process of acting, for you.

Perhaps the most engaging thing about Pacino's funny and enlightening documentary ``Looking for Richard'' is its many scenes of fine actors - Kevin Spacey, Aidan Quinn, Winona Ryder, Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud and director Pacino himself among them - grappling with what they don't get about one of Shakespeare's best-known works, ``Richard III.''

``Like anything with Shakespeare, the more you involve yourself in it, the more you learn,'' said Pacino, who spent four years, off and on, working on his filmmaking debut. ``It wasn't until my 72nd performance of `Richard' onstage that I understood what one scene meant. And that came because I wasn't thinking about it, finally. It just came from doing it every day.

``While we were all doing this together, I saw that happening again,'' Pacino continued. ``The actors were discovering things, becoming the play's people in the readings. You could just see it exploding out.''

The idea of ``Looking for Richard'' grew out of the Oscar- and Tony-winning actor's 1970s series of college lectures. ``I'd recite poetry, talk to the kids,'' Pacino, 56, said in his trademark Bronx speed-rap. ``Every time, I'd throw in a Shakespeare episode, but when I came to it, I could feel the audience back off a little. So then I started explaining, in a preamble, what the play was about in language that they could relate to. Then I'd gradually slip in some Shakespeare dialogue, and more often than not they'd come to it, because they had a frame of reference.

``Twenty years later, somebody said, `Do a ``Richard'' movie.' But how would I do that? It's been done before, greatly,'' Pacino added, referring, of course, to Laurence Olivier's classic 1955 film version of the War of the Roses epic. Since then, a movie that updated the action to an imaginary, 1930s fascist state, starring Ian McKellen as the hunchbacked plotter who murders his way onto the English throne, was produced. And a print of a 1912 silent version, which is believed to be the oldest American feature film in existence, recently was discovered (the AFI L.A. Film Festival will screen it Tuesday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

``So I started experimenting with it,'' Pacino continued, ``going out there, using the same idea I had in the schools. We started doing that four years ago. In that period I made four other movies and did two plays, so this was just a question of when I could get to it.''

``Looking for Richard'' is an impressionistic collage of man-on-the-street interviews, actors' readings, full-costume scenes and journeys to the sites of Shakespeare's birth and the Globe Theatre, where his plays were first staged in the 16th and 17th centuries. Eminent scholars and British acting royalty spout their learned opinions - and yes, they explain iambic pentameter, but give differing definitions.

But again, the most fascinating footage involves Pacino, in various stages of unshavenness, thrashing out his interpretation of the ruthlessly calculating Richard, and his mostly American cast searching for meaning while admitting, openly, that they don't really know what all the characters and conniving are about. Rarely has the acting process been so nakedly exposed.

Pacino attributes his players' lack of self-consciousness to the project's labor-of-love nature.

``The actors saw the kind of experiment that this was; they went in knowing that we were just trying things out,'' Pacino said. ``But there was an enormous amount of trust there, almost shockingly so. I was surprised they allowed us in in this way, but they had a need to do that, too. And they weren't under the gun, so to speak; it was an off-and-on kind of thing and they were doing it gratis.

``Still, there was a tremendous leap of faith there.''

As there was for Pacino, who is not only onscreen throughout ``Looking for Richard'' but directing, in a variety of styles and situations under impossibly fragmented conditions, for the first time. It would be a daunting assigment for the most seasoned filmmaker, let alone an actor exploring new territory.

But Pacino got a tremendous charge out of the whole, demanding process.

``Having an idea and making a film out of it provides a kind of constant,'' he explained. ``It's with you every day, and that's the fun of it - sort of playing with the clay, something I'm not used to doing. This was more involving than acting, more an extension of your whole self. That was liberating, though sometimes it was exhausting, too.

``But it's also good for the obvious reason of control,'' Pacino said about directing. ``As an actor in movies, you always feel like what you've done is out of your hands. It's usually in more capable hands, but you always question that. With this thing, I noticed, I let go of my self-censoring tendencies because I was more in control of things. That's a funny paradox; the control aspect of it actually sets you free.''

Sounds like an insight from Richard himself, perhaps literature's most self-aware control freak. It's even more interesting coming out of the mouth of Al Pacino, whose signature film role, ``The Godfather'' trilogy's Michael Corleone, was led by his need for control to betrayal, tragedy and his family's destruction.

``I do know Francis (Ford Coppola, the `Godfather' films' director) is a big Shakespearean,'' Pacino noted. ``He told me he immersed himself in Shakespeare when he was writing the screenplays. But that's nothing I've pondered.''

Well, then, what about the film he's currently co-starring in, ``Devil's Advocate.'' Keanu Reeves plays the lawyer, leaving one to speculate whether Pacino's deep exploration of one of history's outstanding villains influenced his current portrayal of, well, the other guy.

``Yes, `Richard' was good practice for that,'' the actor laughed. ``It's good practice for everything. Doing plays is good practice for everything.''

Pacino hopes that ``Looking for Richard'' will infect audiences with his love for the theater and its greatest practitioner.

``We're always trying to intepret Shakespeare in a way that's relevant to contemporary audiences,'' he said, ``find that thing that's going to make it come alive for us today. Because there's so much to get out of Shakespeare, it seems neglectful to feel people won't go near it because they feel intimidated by it or they think it's not for them.

``Shakespeare is for everybody. And to make it entertaining is the real goal, of course, because he was so entertaining, and that's what theater is.''

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3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) NO FEAR

Al Pacino tackles Shakespeare head on and comes out smiling in `Looking for Richard'

(2) Pacino, center, spent four years, off and on, working on ``Richard,'' his filmmaking debut.

(3) ``Like anything with Shakespeare, the more you involve yourself in it, the more you learn,'' says Al Pacino, who demystifies Shakespeare and the acting process in ``Looking for Richard.''