It took 14 years for David Carradine...

It took 14 years for David Carradine to complete Americana (Channel 9 Sunday at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.), but the effort was worth it. Loosely based on Henry Morton Robinson’s “The Perfect Round,” it is a mesmerizing poetic fable that cuts to the core of the eternal contradictions--that tug between the impulse to create and the impulse to destroy--within the American psyche so painfully revealed by the Vietnam War. Americana is one of those films with such a sense of ritual about it, such rhythmic pacing and lush, sensual beauty in its heartland sounds and images, that it can carry you away. It’s Kansas, 1973, when seedy Vietnam vet Carradine wanders into a sleepy, bump-in-the-road village distinguished only by a derelict carrousel. Instinctively, he knows that he has found what he’s been looking for and sets about restoring it--only to capture the unwanted attention of some bored young layabouts. In this very special film Carradine plays out one of our most cherished myths, that of a man of peace who is forced against his will to resort to violence once more so that he may fulfill his mission.

Gone With the Wind (CBS Sunday 9-11 p.m., completed Tuesday 8-11 p.m.) is surely the most enjoyable, the most beloved of all films that were ever called great. The 1939 David O. Selznick classic of Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War saga stars, of course, Vivien Leigh as the tempestuous, steely Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara and Clark Gable as the dashing Rhett Butler (whom Mitchell modeled on her first husband), with Olivia de Havilland as the gentle Melanie and Leslie Howard as the aristocratic Ashley. De Havilland’s performance is especially remarkable in that she makes human a paragon of nobility.

Uncommon Valor (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.) is not nearly an uncommon enough film for its prickly, painful subject: those American soldiers long ago written off by the government as missing in action in Southeast Asia but who may in fact be still alive and held captive. Despite the fervor of its protest against official indifference toward the MIAs and their families, this 1983 film plays like a routine war movie. Gene Hackman, however, is terrific as an Air Force colonel, at once an angry, loving father and a straight-arrow military careerist, who joins forces with Texas oil tycoon Robert Stack to mount an elaborate attempt to rescue their sons, who they have learned may be held in what seems to be a prison camp.

The new TV movie Mercy or Murder? (NBC Sunday at 9 p.m.) casts Robert Young as Roswell Gilbert, the elderly Floridian who took the life of his incurably ill wife of 51 years and was later tried for murder. Michael Learned, Eddie Albert and Frances Reid co-star.

Stranger in My Bed (NBC Monday at 9 p.m.), another new TV movie based on an actual incident, stars Lindsay Wagner as a woman struggling to recover her self-identity and relationship with her family after an auto accident has left her with total amnesia. Armand Assante plays her husband.

Yet another new TV movie, Night of Courage (ABC Monday at 9 p.m.), stars Barnard Hughes as an elderly man who denied refuge to a Hispanic youth subsequently beaten to death. Daniel Hugh Kelly plays the dead youth’s teacher determined to get to the truth of Hughes’ seemingly callous attitude.

In the 1972 heist movie The Hot Rock (Channel 5 Monday at 8 p.m.) Robert Redford and George Segal display insouciant charm as a pair of accident-prone heisters eager to snatch an egg-size diamond on display at the Brooklyn Museum. Along for the fun are Zero Mostel, Ron Leibman, Paul Sand and Moses Gunn.

In Endangered Species (Channel 5 Tuesday at 8 p.m.), Alan Rudolph’s taut political thriller, the cattle near a small Colorado town begin to be decimated. Their carcasses are left peculiarly mutilated while their internal organs seem to have evaporated. The background for this chilling, timely mystery has been fully worked out by Rudolph and his writers, but what goes on in the foreground feels less than inspired. Attempting to investigate the perplexing and increasing cattle deaths is newly elected sheriff JoBeth Williams, who unfortunately has been rather jarringly and unpersuasively teamed with Robert Urich as a recent arrival in the community. Urich is a one-time New York supercop, burned out and stuck with a drinking problem and a teen-age daughter almost as surly as he is.

Ann and Jeanette Petrie’s documentary Mother Teresa (Channel 28 Wednesday at 9 p.m.) is worthy of their remarkable subject, an aristocratic Albanian-born member of the Irish Sisters of Loreto who in 1946 heard the call of God to work in the slums of Calcutta, where for nearly 20 years she had been a parochial-school geography teacher. Forty years later, Mother Teresa estimates that she and her Missionaries of Charity have rescued 42,000 people from the streets. So alive is Mother Teresa with humanity’s infinite possibilities for good in the face of evil and despair that it is exhilarating.

Adapted by its author Joseph Wambaugh, The Onion Field (Channel 5 Wednesday at 8 p.m.) tells of the actual murder of a policeman 20 years ago and centers on its devastating impact upon the dead man’s partner. The film is powerful and grueling, affecting but erratically paced, as credible as a toothache in some scenes and mawkish in others. James Woods heads a stunning cast. Not the least of all, The Onion Field is a grimly convincing expose of a justice system that creates its own victims.

The 1982 remake of I, the Jury (Channel 5 Thursday at 8 p.m.) has everything going for it until it’s done in by gratuitous violence. It has dynamic direction by Richard T. Heffron, a deftly updated story by Larry Cohen, a moody jazz score by Bill Conti and an appropriately gritty look, thanks to cinematographer Andrew Laszlo. Best of all is a terrific performance by Armand Assante as Mickey Spillane’s toughest of tough guys, Mike Hammer. But it is quickly done in by the film makers’ determination to leave nothing to the imagination in the depiction of extreme violence.

Off the Minnesota Strip (Channel 13 Thursday at 8 p.m.) is a notable 1980 TV movie, directed by Lamont Johnson and starring Mare Winningham as a teen-age runaway who tries to return home after ending up as a Manhattan prostitute.

The new TV movie American Harvest (CBS Friday at 9 p.m.) stars Wayne Rogers and Earl Holliman in a drama of hardship, courage and family rivalries between competing crews of wheat-harvesting contractors whose work ranges from North Dakota to Texas.

In the new TV movie Sister Margaret and the Saturday Night Ladies (CBS Saturday at 9 p.m.) Bonnie Franklin stars as a nun who is determined to open a halfway house for women leaving prison on parole. Rosemary Clooney is one of the parolees.

Although its premise is finally too far-fetched to accept, Fedora (Channel 9 Saturday at 10 p.m.) is nonetheless fascinating as a work of bravura style and intense personality. Directed by Billy Wilder from a story in Thomas Tryon’s “Crowned Heads,” it is a kind of bizarre companion film to the Wilder masterpiece “Sunset Boulevard” with its mordant yet compassionate commentary on Hollywood past and present and the perversities of stardom. William Holden plays a veteran producer on the skids who makes an all-out attempt to persuade a reclusive, legendary Garbo-like star (Marthe Keller) to come out of retirement and star in his new version of “Anna Karenina,” only to stumble upon a grotesque secret.

Selected evening cable fare: Beau Brummell (Disney Channel Sunday at 7); After Hours (Z Sunday at 7, Wednesday at 9); Year of the Dragon (Movie Channel Sunday at 9); Swann in Love (Bravo Sunday at 9:30); The Journey of Natty Gann (Disney Monday at 6); Handle With Care (Lifetime Monday at 8); Where the Green Ants Dream (SelecTV Monday at 8); Rembrandt (Disney Monday at 9); Flight of the Phoenix (WOR Tuesday at 6); Miracle in Milan (Bravo Tuesday at 9); Excalibur (Movie Channel Tuesday at 9); Mephisto (Z Tuesday at 9); She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Cinemax Wednesday at 6); The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) (WTBS Wednesday at 7); Umberto D (Bravo Wednesday at 8); Dim Sum (Bravo Wednesday at 9:30); Twentieth Century (Z Thursday at 9); Days of Wine and Roses (WTBS Thursday at 9:50); Being There (WOR Friday at 6); Kiss Me, Kate (Movie Channel Friday at 7); A Clockwork Orange (Bravo Friday at 8); My Fair Lady (Disney Friday at 9); The Holy Innocents (Bravo Friday at 10:30); Tender Mercies (Disney Saturday at 9).