STEVEN STEALBERG?

In making Amistad, his forthcoming film about a 19th century slave rebellion, Steven Spielberg faced the difficult task of shaping a coherent narrative out of history, always a tricky business, given the manifold ambiguities and contradictions of human behavior. A similar task awaits whoever gets to adjudicate a recently filed lawsuit alleging that Spielberg and his colleagues are, to put it baldly, plagiarists--that they swiped their vision of the Amistad tale from Echo of Lions, a little-known historical novel by Barbara Chase-Riboud.

Lawsuits like this are common in the entertainment industry, but the attorneys here are talking awfully tough. "This is the most egregious case I've ever seen," says Chase-Riboud's attorney, who is asking for $10 million in damages and threatening to seek an injunction to block the film's release. Spielberg's lawyer retorts that the plaintiff is "nuts" and that her novel is "wordy, dull, confusing and phony." So there.

The history: In 1839, Africans aboard a Spanish slave ship named the Amistad escaped their chains and killed most of the crew. Two months later, the ship was found drifting off the shore of Long Island, N.Y., where the mutineers were taken into custody. Former President John Quincy Adams ended up arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court the case for giving the Africans their freedom.

The Hollywood history: In 1984, convinced that the Amistad episode would make a great film, Debbie Allen, the actress (Fame) and choreographer (numerous Academy Award shows), optioned a historical novel about the case, Black Mutiny. After nearly 10 years of making no headway with the project, she took it to DreamWorks SKG, the fledgling studio founded by Spielberg with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

The further Hollywood history: In 1988, Chase-Riboud finished a draft of her novel about the Amistad, which was sent by her pal, Jacqueline Onassis, to Amblin, Spielberg's production company. Executives read the book and made nice noises but ended up passing on it. So one can imagine Chase-Riboud's consternation when she read in Variety last fall that Spielberg would be directing Amistad.

Does anyone have title to history? With their shared basis in fact, there are obviously a lot of similarities between Echo of Lions and Amistad. But judging from the film's shooting script, the two works are vastly different in tone, structure and dramatic focus. Echo of Lions has moments of empathic brilliance but suffers from not knowing which events deserve emphasis. The Amistad script is the sleek, A-list product--riveting, literate, conventional.

The lawsuit details 12 instances in which inventions of Chase-Riboud have allegedly ended up in the shooting script. However, at least to a critic's eye, many of the examples appear to be trivial or forced. For example, the suit alleges that Chase-Riboud invented the notion that the rebellion's leader, Cinque, had a son, which is also suggested in the film, but other histories say he did indeed have children. One of the suit's most substantive claims is that both works include a fictional black abolitionist who aids in the Africans' legal case. But there was no shortage of real-life black abolitionists at the time, and it's hard to imagine any dramatist presenting this story to a contemporary audience without an African-American activist at its core.

Still, Chase-Riboud may have a case. In addition to the fact that her novel was submitted to Spielberg's company, an even more telling detail may be that the film's sole credited screenwriter, David Franzoni, previously participated in meetings when Dustin Hoffman's company considered adapting Echo of Lions. Franzoni denies reading the book, but it would be hard to argue that he wasn't at least familiar with it.

Both sides agree that Amistad has a chance to be the Schindler's List for the African diaspora. "This is so important a story and so long neglected," says Chase-Riboud, "that to have this cloud over its head is a tragedy. It proves the cynicism of the filmmakers."

"I don't have any anger at Barbara," replies producer Allen. "I know she's doing this out of passion."