From Russia, with Agony Peter the Great Nbc;

By Richard Zoglin

In 1697, Peter the Great of Russia set out on one of history's most momentous vacations. The towering (6 ft. 7 in.), charismatic monarch became the first Czar ever to venture peacefully outside his country, traveling for 18 months to the major capitals of Western Europe. He absorbed Western ideas and technological know-how and returned to guide Russia into the modern world.

That is the most familiar story about Peter the Great. The best one, however, begins nearly three centuries later. An American TV crew embarks on another momentous trip: to the Soviet Union to film a mini-series based on Peter's life. But the production is in turmoil from the start, and the movie's creator is fired before the crew sets foot on Russian soil. The Soviet bureaucracy and brutal cold cause countless hardships and delays. Then the star falls ill and has to quit before filming is complete. His role is taken over by an unknown look-alike.

That NBC's trouble-plagued Peter the Great actually made it to the screen is close to a miracle; that it turns out to be another of TV's pretty but plodding historical sagas is less surprising. With its lavish sets (including the 17th century Kremlin) and the proverbial cast of thousands, the eight- hour, $27 million epic looks spectacular. Maximillian Schell, the most prominent of four actors who play Peter, has moments of leonine power, and Vanessa Redgrave is striking as his treacherous sister. But the rest of the all-star cast--including Hannah Schygulla, Laurence Olivier, Trevor Howard and Mel Ferrer--is lost in the pageantry. Edward Anhalt's script is flabby and inert, and history is contaminated with hokey invention (a bogus meeting in London, for instance, between Peter and Sir Isaac Newton).

The filmmakers would have done better to record their own turbulent drama. It began in 1982, when Producer Lawrence Schiller (The Executioner's Song) hatched the idea of doing a TV version of Robert K. Massie's critically acclaimed 1980 biography of Peter. After lengthy negotiations, Schiller gained Kremlin approval to film in the U.S.S.R.--the first independent American production ever to do so. Schiller is proud of the 130-page agreement he hammered out with the Soviets, who sought but did not receive script approval. "I badgered them constantly," he says, into "a treaty that stood the test of the film."

Schiller, however, did not. Flamboyant, often volatile, he battled constantly with cost-conscious associates over his grandiose plans. In August 1984, after seven weeks of shooting in Vienna, Schiller was dismissed, with NBC claiming that the production was already three days behind schedule and $800,000 over budget.

Schiller's replacement as producerdirector was Marvin Chomsky (Holocaust), who took over at the outset of seven months of filming in the Soviet Union. Problems cropped up almost immediately. First the production's entire supply of wigs was lost for 3 1/2 weeks. The crew found Soviet accommodations to be spartan, transportation unreliable and toilet paper rough. "I had a miserable time," says Omar Sharif, who plays one of Peter's advisers. Bored with meals of beet-root salads, chicken and potatoes, Sharif took a trip to Paris and brought back cans of tuna, which he ate at night alone in his room.

As filming dragged on, the fabled Russian winter set in. To protect against temperatures that plunged at times to 18 below zero, the crew had to wrap equipment in blankets; once indoors, lights frequently shattered because of the temperature change. After shivering on frigid sets, the cast finally obtained two 54-seat buses, where they changed costumes by retreating behind cloths strung up like curtains. Then last February, a month before he was scheduled to leave to direct a production at Berlin's Deutsche Oper, Schell was laid low by a fever for nearly four weeks. Torn between his Berlin commitment and the unfinished movie, Schell dragged himself out of bed to shoot a few more scenes in Leningrad before departing. "Sometimes," he groans, "I felt half unconscious."

Stranded at the eleventh hour without their star, the producers scoured a London actors' directory and picked Denis De Marne to serve as a stand-in for Peter's remaining scenes. After first balking, Schell later dubbed in De Marne's dialogue. The cinematic sleight of hand is deft but damaging: Peter retreats into shadows and long shots for several crucial scenes in the movie's final segment.

Peter the Great's troubles have left a wake of unhappy people. Schell is upset that a double was used and has vowed never to do another mini-series. Schiller (who is given co-directing and "preproduction" credit) is still furious about his ouster, and has filed a $10 million lawsuit. NBC, meanwhile, has its own cause for concern: Peter the Great will be competing against CBS's steamy mini-series Sins. After surviving production disputes, a disappearing star and a climate that defeated Napoleon, Peter the Great may finally be done in by Joan Collins.

With reporting by Michael Riley/Los Angeles