USA,
1990, 112 min
Shown in 2001
CREDITS
- dir
-
Clint Eastwood
- prod
-
Clint Eastwood
- scr
-
Peter Viertel, James Bridges, Burt Kennedy
- cam
-
Jack N. Green
- editor
-
Joel Cox
- mus
-
Lennie Niehaus
- cast
-
Clint Eastwood, Jeff Fahey, George Dzundza
- source
-
Warner Bros. Classics, 15821 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 525, Encino, CA 91436
-
COMMENTS
Clint Eastwood appeared in person to receive the Akira Kurosawa Award in 2001.
OTHER
John Huston is a legendary presence in cinema history, storied as a hard-drinking, brusque, obsessive auteur. In White Hunter, Black Heart, Clint Eastwood inhabits the character of Huston—in the somewhat fictionalized form of John Wilson—and transforms a showy, brash performance into a finely nuanced portrait of the man. Based on Peter Viertel’s novel, the film details Huston/Wilson’s journey with his screenwriter to Africa as they ostensibly scout locations and soak up atmosphere for his next film, The African Queen. But it is apparent that the swaggering Wilson is much more interested in the thrill of hunting and killing an elephant. Battling a meddlesome producer and his attendant studio spies, Wilson bullies his way through the countryside and resort towns, going eyeball-to-eyeball with anyone or anything he finds morally contemptible or simply in his way. In one spry scene, Wilson verbally crushes a wealthy white woman who insists that Hitler was right about “the Jews.” Eastwood the director manages to draw big themes like obsession, colonialism and racism from Wilson the character, rather than setting them up around him. The result is a fluid, dynamic and subtle film.
—Nigel Tangborn
FACTOID #232
Our first seminar at the Festival was entitled Censorship and the Actor’s Art: A Symposium, featuring panelists Michael Mayer and Lou Greenspan at Grace Cathedral, October 24, 1966.
