Clouds Finally Break for ‘A Midnight Clear’ : Movies: The adaptation of William Wharton’s World War II novel has taken nearly a decade and teams of writers.

Bantam Books won the war for rights to Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s story, shelling out $5 million. The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Colin Powell, has taken to narrating videotapes, some with “never before seen footage” of Patriots intercepting Scuds. It’s been a big summer for parades.

1991 seems to have been a vintage year for war. People are getting drunk--not to mention rich--on the memories of last winter, intoxicated with a victory that, for some, numbs the ache of Vietnam.

As roughnecks attempt to douse crude infernos in Kuwait, as Kurds search for a future, as Saddam regroups and as the world attempts to get a handle on the Middle East, a film wends its way through post-production, a film that looks at a different war--and at the same time, at all wars.

“A Midnight Clear,” based on William Wharton’s novel, re-creates the tragic, innocence-robbing journey of young soldiers in the Ardennes forest during Christmastime, 1944. The Battle of the Bulge has just begun.

This is the third novel to be made into a movie from the man whose books include “Birdy” and “Dad.” He has said “A Midnight Clear” is a thinly disguised account of his own experiences as a member of an infantry and reconnaissance squad scouting snowy terrain in a forest spanning parts of France, Belgium and Luxembourg.

The story adapted by director-writer Keith Gordon deals with a depleted and weary squad of young Americans who encounter an equally ravaged group of Germans. The Americans begin to wonder who, or what, is the real enemy in a conflict history unequivocally remembers as “The Right War.”

Ethan Hawke leads the ensemble of young actors who trudged through Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. With plenty of snow and poplar trees, the forests of the Wasatch are a perfect match for the Ardennes. Hawke plays Wharton’s alter ego Will, a 20-year-old soldier who unwittingly finds himself a sergeant and in command of a squad decimated by Nazi grenades and bullets.

“The way the nation is right now, if you call this an anti-war film, people will think you’re bad-mouthing George Bush,” said Hawke about his new movie and the current mood of the country. “We are tackling World War II, the war that unquestionably was the right thing to do. And we are showing how many questions there actually were in that war.”

“A Midnight Clear” has been almost a decade in development. A&M; Films purchased the book shortly after the company finished production on “Birdy.” Director Alan Parker and writers Sandy Kroopf and Jack Behr brought a contemporary slant to the story by updating it to fit Vietnam, a move that reportedly made Wharton unhappy.

Like “Birdy,” “A Midnight Clear” resisted adaptation to film. No fewer than two writer-director teams tried their hands at it. Writer Trevor Griffiths (“Reds”) and director John Mackenzie (“The Long Good Friday”) were one team; Patrick Duncan (“84 Charlie Mopic”) and Randa Haines (“The Doctor,” “Children of a Lesser God”) were another.

“The previous screenplays didn’t work because people kept going away from the book and making something different out of it,” said A&M; Films President Dale Pollock.

In 1988, Pollock saw “The Chocolate War,” Keith Gordon’s debut as a director, and his second screenplay. An adaptation of Robert Comiker’s novel about tyranny in a Catholic boys school, the film convinced Pollock that Gordon was the one to solve the problems of writing a film script from Wharton’s novel.

Gordon considers himself a director first, a writer second. For the record, he’s a triple threat, with major roles in “All That Jazz,” “Dressed to Kill,” “Christine” and “Back to School.” He moved into production on the low-budget festival entree “Static,” for which he acted, co-wrote the script and served as co-producer.

“I come from the if-it-isn’t-broken-don’t-fix-it school,” said Gordon. “I kept as much of the book as I could. I’ve talked briefly with Wharton. We spoke on the phone after I wrote the script. We exchanged a few letters. But I didn’t go to him and ask, ‘Is this right?’ Wherever the book worked, I kept it. Wherever I felt it would be more cinematic, I tried to keep the flavor of the book and translate that. Wharton’s writing has wonderful images and creates a mood which, for me, is what the film is all about.”

Gordon is working on a modest budget, less than $10 million. He cast the ensemble of actors with an eye toward chemistry, eschewing the budget-inflating big name.

Hawke’s character provides the focus of the film. Will narrates the story, the audience comes to know the other soldiers through him. Hawke, who came to the attention of film audiences as Todd Anderson in “Dead Poets Society,” said he didn’t set out to play William Wharton in “A Midnight Clear.”

“I can’t play Wharton. I don’t know what he’s like,” said Hawke. “I’m the character he wrote into his book. Will is someone who goes to war wanting to do the right thing, wanting to be loyal, wanting to accomplish the good. And what happens is that the truth becomes very, very gray. My character tries to control and manipulate his situation. And discovers that it’s impossible.”

The first character, Will, introduces is Vance Wilkins, a soldier the rest of the squad calls “Mother” because of his maternal badgering. Mother marks the film-acting debut of Gary Sinise, founder of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company who, last September, completed an acclaimed 350-performance stint as Tom Joad in the company’s Tony Award-winning production of “The Grapes of Wrath.”

In the film’s first scene, Mother runs naked through the forest, eventually plunging into an ice-cold stream. Will witnesses this mental aberration and explains that Mother left a young wife back home. A few days before Mother’s self-destructive episode, he had received word that their baby had been born dead.

“He’s an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation,” said Sinise about Mother. “He doesn’t believe--at all--in the heroics of this war. The only interest he has is in being with his wife. He just wants to preserve some sense of himself, to go home and be whole. He’s not whole any more.”

Stan Shutzer, played by Arye Gross (“Coupe de Ville,” “The Couch Trip”), does believe in the war. He’s the only member of the squad who is Jewish. When the Americans encounter the Germans, it is Shutzer who devises an unorthodox plan to capture them.

“A sense of outrage is centered in Stan,” said Gross, “and he tries to instill it in the other guys. It sets him apart a little bit. The strange thing is, while all six of us are pretty tight, we are all very separate from one another.”

Gross sought out American survivors of the Battle of the Bulge who were Jewish to research his role. Every man he interviewed had been the only Jewish soldier in his group.

“They all talked about how, no matter how close they were with the rest of the guys in their squad, there was always something that separated them. They could be fighting a common enemy and know that the guy next to them, if they weren’t fighting the Nazis, could just as easily put a bullet in their head.

“One of the gentlemen I interviewed said he really didn’t encounter a lot of anti-Semitism. He said there were jokes now and then and he told me about how one night the guys had stuffed raw bacon in his mouth while he was sleeping. I don’t know. That sounds pretty anti-Semitic to me.”

Kevin Dillon (“The Doors”), who plays Mel Avakian, researched his role in the American Legion Post 90 meeting hall in his hometown, Mamorneck, N.Y. Dillon started frequenting the hall while preparing for his role as the frightened and volatile Bunny in “Platoon.”

“He’s a leader,” said Dillon of Avakian, “and would probably be sergeant if he hadn’t gotten trench foot. Will looks to Mel for advice, because he’s the best soldier of the bunch. Will knows it. There’s nothing bitter. Avakian doesn’t want to be in charge anyway. You know, sometimes you’d rather be a private so you wouldn’t have to deal with all the headaches.”

Peter Berg (“Shocker”) went to his own father--a war historian--for advice on how to play Miller, a soldier whose Aryan good looks play a part in a scheme to persuade the Germans to surrender. Berg said that his father helped him understand details about the Battle of the Bulge but that his emotional inspiration for the role came from news of the Persian Gulf War.

“The more I watched and the more I read, I realized the predominant emotion out there is just plain fear,” said Berg.

Frank Whaley (“The Doors”) plays the sixth member of this group, an unlikely soldier and seminary dropout who the rest of the squad have dubbed “Father.” While an incompetent soldier, Father is the conscience of the other men.

“I don’t think he’s ever killed anyone, or ever would,” said Whaley of his character. “He’s the guy everyone looks out for. The reason he’s still alive is that guys have pulled him out of bad situations, or left him in the hole when they went to fight the battle.

“I was raised an Irish Catholic,” said Whaley, “and my mother tried desperately to get my brother and me to go to mass, with very little success. There was a period, though, when I forced myself to go. I thought if I didn’t, I was hell-bound. I put a lot of that fear into the character.”

Keith Gordon hesitated when asked if his film is a war film.

“It’s a war film without a lot of war in it,” he said. “It’s a war film that focuses on people.

“What I don’t want to make is a pat film, a film with the limited statement of ‘War is bad.’ That’s too easy. World War II was an unavoidable war. No one would disagree that Hitler had to be stopped. But wars are generally bunches of young people who have nothing against each other who, nonetheless, are forced into the position of trying to kill one another.”