VON SYDOW CONVEYS IRON WILL OF NAZI SUPPORTER IN `HAMSUN'.

Byline: Jay Carr Boston Globe

History is filled with examples of artists outspokenly taking a political stand, but what happens when they say the wrong things? In this country, poet Ezra Pound thought Hitler was a good idea. In France, Celine did. And in Norway, the 1920 Nobel Prize-winning novelist Knut Hamsun was an unwavering supporter of Hitler. ``Hamsun,'' Jan Troell's film, brings great craft and diligence to the job of portraying the literary eminence as a man of enormous myopia and hubris. Max Von Sydow portrays him as a towering oak of wrongheadedness and consuming ego, although embodying a certain integrity. When the war ended, and many another Nazi sympathizer downplayed his beliefs, Hamsun stubbornly refused to run for cover, insisting upon owning up to what he said, forcing the government into imposing a penalty upon a self-disgraced old man it wished would just go away.

Von Sydow's Hamsun convincingly portrays weariness. We believe him when he says he'd welcome death. Yet he refused to cop out with an insanity plea, and his hardy body wouldn't die. The film includes a detailed examination of his domestic woes and eventual reconciliation with his estranged wife. As Marie Hamsun, Ghita Norby is first-rate, bitter about the barrenness married life imposed upon her, starting when she was forced to give up her acting career. She's not exactly powerless in the domestic infighting, either. The girl who grew up on a farm scoffs at the novelist who wrote ``Growth of the Soil'' in a hotel room and never missed a meal while writing ``Hunger.''

The film opens in 1935, when Hamsun was 76, runs until the end of the unrepentant Hamsun's life, and implies that the couple's near-deathbed reconciliation may have come in part because she was as flattered by Hitler's flunkies as he was, and thus shared a degree of complicity. We're convinced that the Hamsun household was a thoroughly miserable one. What's murkier is how Hamsun came to his Nazi beliefs. One assumes it was because he admired physical strength and prowess and aestheticized them. But the film, although two-plus hours long, is vague on what in Hamsun's background might have led him to Hitler.

It may be a mark of integrity that Troell and his screenwriter refuse to speculate on Hamsun's motives. But the film seems a bit hollow and lacking without them. Still, one can only come away with deep respect for Von Sydow's elemental presence as the self-misdirected novelist. He convinces us that Hamsun may have been a figure of perverted greatness capable of matter of factly cannibalizing those around him, but a figure of greatness all the same, humanistic in his art, which makes his repugnant stance all the more troubling.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Hamsun'' (Not rated).

The stars: Max Von Sydow, Ghita Norby, Anette Hoff, Asa Soderling, Eindride Eidsvold, Gard B. Eidsvold, Sverre Amker Ousdal, Edgar Selge and Ernst Jacobi.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Jan Troell. Screenplay by Per Olov Enquist, based on the book by Thorkild Hansen.

Running time: Two hours, 38 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle's Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

Our rating: Three Stars.