You took my general contention too far here. I'm not saying anything about Nazi Germany or Communist Russia. I'm talking about fascism in general being (rightly) condemned while communism is either glossed over or commended. In particular, I was thinking of major films from just this last decade:
The Sum of All Fears, wherein the novel's Arab terrorists are morphed into Hollywood's catch-all baddie group; unrepentant Nazis. Presumably because it's unwise to use current events to frame your generic bad guys.
Che, of course, for the reasons discussed previously.
Finally, foremost in my mind at the time of my last post, Guillermo Del Toro's El Labirinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth). Captain Vidal has to be one of the most revolting characters I've ever seen. The man has no redeeming qualities, and is a truly excellent slate on which to paint the full horror of mid-twentieth century fascism (or, hell, fascism during any time period). At the same time though, the communist resistance fighters are portrayed as just about the purest, most virtuous band of heroic freedom fighters cinema has ever graced us with. Now I've no complaints with that; Vidal was the movie's antagonist, and the resistance fighters played well off of him in the traditional 'absolute good vs. absolute evil' that's such a hallmark of film. I'd be shocked to the core though if I ever saw a movie where the roles were reversed.
To these works are added the more common films that do, in fact, simply feature actual 1940's era Nazis as the main antagonists; last month's Defiance for one, alongside one of the best movies of all time, Schindler's List.
In contrast, I couldn't think of any halfway recent western film that details communism as being an equally brutal system (not that this means anything; I may well be overlooking a treasure trove of material that blows my assertion out of the water). You make a valid point in positing that this may simply be a result of our cultural identification with Hitler as the embodiment of evil, a characterization that is certainly accurate. I also take your point that we just don't hear much about Russia in general, given that the European theater in WWII was apparently won, as we all know, by a group of dedicated American farmboys who jumped off of the boats and instantly fixed everything (though oddly enough now that I think about it, that is, in actuality, how the Pacific theater was won...).
I remain curious as to whether these two points are the dominant explanation for the seeming disconnect between the treatments of fascism and communism. While impossible to empirically test (which of course renders this conversation rather pointless), I would very much like to know how much Hollywood's latent guilt over its complicity in the advent and growth of McCarthyism, coupled with the European left's flat-out refusal to condemn communism in any sort of meaningful ideological way, plays into the differing treatments between the two extreme ideologies.
As an aside, the best film I've seen which takes time to point out the madness of communism (as opposed to protesting against more 'pedestrian' authoritanianism, as does Richard "Free Tibet!" Gere's Red Corner) is a Chinese film; Farewell My Concubine. While an excellent movie, watching it has to rank up near the top of my "Most Depressing Ways to Spend 3 Hours of My Life" list. The movie starts off by showcasing the wretched life common people had to live in the dying days of the Republic of China. Then, the Japanese invade, and things get worse. Then the nationalists retake power at the end of the war, and the lives of the main characters descend to levels of sadness that plumb new depths...And then Mao enters stage left and the Cultural Revolution begins, and you seriously begin wondering how any person could maintain their sanity in such a situation. Highly recommended.
