THE SOUND AND THE FUHRER NO END TO CONTROVERSY WHEN PROJECT'S CALLED 'HITLER'.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

Such is the grim power of the very name - Adolf Hitler - that, nearly 60 years after his death, the mere idea of a TV miniseries focusing on his coldly calculated rise to power can engender controversy.

CBS' ``Hitler: The Rise of Evil'' - an earnest attempt to explore how Germany fell in thrall to his anti-Semitic vision - has been dogged by controversy from its inception, when its announced premise was ``Hitler: The Young Years.'' This apparently gave some well-intentioned protesters the erroneous impression that casting calls were filled with James Van Der Beek look-alikes.

``When some people heard 'Young Hitler,' they visualized a 'Young Indiana Jones'-type project, with one of the actors from the WB,'' executive producer Peter Sussman opines, ``as if it were CBS' attempt to respond to the pressure of youthful demographics, and they questioned whether the subject of Hitler is the right one to overcommercialize with demographic targeting.'' Sussman, who is Jewish, admits even his friends advised that he tread cautiously on this production.

``This is television,'' he says flatly. ``There is a certain level of cynicism about what one can do on network TV - in an arena like this, especially. It has changed over the years of what you could do properly on CBS. You know, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you try to do something more ambitious, you're criticized again - you can't win.''

Already in trouble

Once it became clear that ``Hitler: The Rise of Evil'' concerned the dictator's rise to power in Germany prior to World War II and was historically significant - scarcely the stuff of lurid storytelling - along came a TV Guide article quoting Sussman's colleague, executive producer Ed Gernon, announcing, ``It basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole world into war. I can't think of a better time to examine this history than now.''

Ouch. This was interpreted as Gernon - who's from Canada, a country which refused to assist the United States in Operation Iraqi Freedom - comparing Hitler to President Bush, which understandably would tick people off, particularly anyone with a passing knowledge of Saddam Hussein's regime.

A close reading of the comment suggests it more closely compared Americans who fell in line behind Bush's liberty-diminishing USA Patriot Act with Germans who allowed Hitler's policies running roughshod over Europe. At one point in the film, Hitler declares: ``These are troubled times. The Constitution could not anticipate them. A national monument has been destroyed. Our democracy has been attacked. If we are to wage war on these foreign infiltrators, certain civil rights must be suspended.''

But no matter: Gernon, who wasn't even an employee of CBS, was fired by the company that produced ``Rise of Evil.'' (One wonders, does Gernon's summary dismissal, encouraged by a company that ordinarily champions the First Amendment, prove his point?)

Why'd they do it?

And just as that furor, so to speak, died down, boldly into the breach steps Matthew Modine, who plays Fritz Gerlich, a journalist who decried Hitler's policies. ``The first obvious difference,'' Modine says, sardonically stoking fires anew, ``is that Adolf Hitler won the popular vote.''

More seriously, Modine muses over other reasons people looked askance at the project, one he says was suggested to him by, of all people, Joan Rivers. ``She said the problem is we live in a society that forgives too much - we're always looking for places to put blame for misgivings. We say, 'My mother beat me,' as a way of explaining away all our bad behavior. But if you're still filled with that sort of hatred by the age of 40 or 50, you can't blame your childhood any longer - there's something (messed) up about you.

``Intellectually, that may have been the concern of the Jewish Defense League and those living who suffered through the second world war: To make a film that in any possible way suggested here's a poor guy who was beaten by his father, and his mother was doting and gave him too much attention. If you explain that, then it's an excuse. Maybe it's too soon. There are survivors still around, and maybe it's unfair to do to them. It's not showing them the appropriate compassion.''

The source of evil

But depicting the context in which such virulent hatred was allowed to thrive is important, argues historian Cornelius Schnauber, who interviewed, among others, Albert Speer in his own studies of Hitler. ``Hitler wasn't some monster from another star - he grew up where a lot of people grew up,'' Schnauber notes. ``It's important to show how the evil came out as he came up with the so-called Final Solution. His evolution was similar to that of Saddam Hussein.''

Robert Carlyle, who stars as Hitler (and had turned down two previous offers to play the dictator), says of the controversy, ``I tried to ignore it, really. I couldn't really take on people saying it was a wrong thing to do - it's not really what an actor should be thinking about. My focus was on getting it right. It didn't affect my performance really. I pretty much blocked it from my mind.

``I don't believe (the film humanizes him),'' he continues. ``I mean, you can't deny he was a human being - he walked around and spoke. But I've tried my best not to go that way ... I was quite definite in portraying it correctly. I didn't try to win support with a flashy performance to make the guy in any way sympathetic. ... He was a cold and clinical man.''

Much was made of the fact that the screenplay changed hands - John Pielmeier and G. Ross Parker are credited with the script - while few noted that in Hollywood, numerous screenwriters frequently contribute to the same project.

Schnauber, who read the original screenplay, attests that there were no major overhauls. He made suggestions on improvements, some which were heeded, some ignored. He points out a couple of his suggestions that were ignored - there were far more journalists who decried Hitler besides Gerlich, but for reasons of time, they could not be incorporated.

More intriguingly, Schnauber notes, ``The script has Hitler referring much too much to (German composer) Richard Wagner, which he hardly did in any of his speeches. Some works of Wagner were favorable to Jews which were ignored during the Nazi years. And Hitler didn't really understand Wagner's music, except his early operas.'' (Carlyle says he got into character by listening to Wagner operas.) Hitler, Schnauber notes, surreptitiously enjoyed music by Jewish composers.

After all the controversy, it's now up to audiences - and, of course, critics - to divine how adequately ``Rise to Evil'' depicts the Nazi era. Entertainment Weekly condemned ``Rise of Evil's'' ``timid storytelling.'' The New York Times opined, ``The filmmakers worked so hard to be tasteful and responsible that they robbed their film of suspense, drama and passion.'' USA Today deems the film ``ambitious but ultimately unsatisfying,'' adding, ``A movie cannot be afraid of its own subject.''

The irony is mortifying: Protesters have unintentionally created that which they feared the most - a bland elucidation of the 20th century's most virulent evil.

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) ``Hitler: The Rise of Evil'' star Robert Carlyle turned down two previous offers to play the dictator.

(2 -- color) Matthew Modine is Fritz Gerlich, a journalist who opposed Hitler's policies, in the CBS miniseries.