 "An overlooked gem by a maverick film maker." | 2008-10-03 |
| - Reviewed By Paulo Leite from Lisbon, Portugal |
WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART is perhaps Clint Eastwood's most underrated and overlooked film - made in 1990 and shadowed by Clint's Academy Award winning (and ultimate Western) Unforgiven.
Still, those who have enough sensibility will easily put this film as one of Clint's best, as he tells the story of maverick film maker John Wilson's obsession of hunting a big elephant while starting production of his big extravaganza to be shot in Africa during the 30's. As everybody knows, John Wilson is, in fact, a fictional version of John Huston during the shotting of The African Queen.
Everything here is a fictionalization of real people and real events... from Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall traveling together and Katherine Hepburn's manerisms to John Huston's erratic, suicidal and enigmatic behavior.
But there's more than meets the eye as Clint gives us an unique look into the unknown reasons that drive a man... and the consequences of those impulses.
The film is superbly acted, photographed, edited... and one might wonder why it was so overlooked during its release. Trully a film to be discovered. A journey like no other by a master film maker. |
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 "Clint's heart of darkness" | 2008-08-22 |
| - Reviewed By Dennis W. Wong |
| This film although not a commercial success for Clint, further explored his theme of the male psyche. Loosely based on an incident that occurred in the legendary director John Huston's life, this film proven to many that Eastwood was becoming a director of note. It is about one man's dark obsession to hunt down the oldest mammal in existence--the elephant. What occurs in the course of filming "The Africain Queen" is emotionally shattering to him and will lead an imprint on him forever. Eastwood in an off-beat performance subtly conveys this in nuances and gestures and he is ably supported by Jeff Fahey as his voice of conscience. If you want to see something off-beat, do check this out. The critics Siskel & Ebert ranked this as one of the year's best. I would call it Eastwood's art film. |
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| "Little known classic" | 2007-08-28 |
| - Reviewed By S J Buck from Kent, UK |
This is loosely based on the making of The African Queen. Eastwood plays John Wilson (Huston) a cantankerous man who is more interested in big game hunting than shooting the film. In my view this is Clint Eastwoods greatest acting performance. He doesn't impersonate John Huston (maybe he couldn't) but he does capture something of Hustons distinctive drawl. To be clear on this if you want to watch Clint Eastwood being Clint Eastwood as in Dirty Harry, Good the bad and the Ugly etc (which I love as well) this may not be for you.
John Huston endearing trait of sticking up for the down trodden. In one example he picks a fight with the white Hotel owner for abusing a black waiter, in another he castigates a woman for being racist. This latter scene is wonderfully done, with Wilson/Huston turning what was going to be lovely hand drawing of the lady concerned into Hitler.
This film wasn't a great success - it should have been. The ending is very good, although whether its true or not I don't know. John Wilson says in the film "Hunting Elephants isn't a crime, it's bigger than that, it's a sin". Well he does pay for his sin...
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| "A look into the heart of greed" | 2007-03-27 |
| - Reviewed By Bronwyn P. Noble from Madison, Wisconsin |
There aren't too many movies that I think are even close to perfect. White hunter, black heart is one of them.
I just finished watching this film for the first time in a couple of years. It is visceral is an intellectual way -- Huh? -- meaning that one must use both head and heart to really got the most of it.
The film is wrapped around John Wilson, a fictional John Huston at the time he was filming "African Queen," also a favorite of mine, as seen by Peter (Peter Viertel).
Wilson looked at things through a director's eye, analyzing everything to death. But, once analyzed, he acted emotionally -- witness the scenes with the pretty "god-damnest ugly bitch"," the hotel manager, and Kivu, the chief hunter. However, he formed relationships that were superficially intellectual, never really showing his emotions, but always deep. He relished being colorful, and the people around him had to be as colorful as he, himself, was, otherwise they would bore him.
This combination of traits fascinates me. And Clint Eastwood's dead-on "impersonation" of the great man is loving and humorous. The other characters -- with the exception of Peter -- are merely window dressing.
Show you see this film, and perhaps purchase it for your collection? Of course. But don't take it so much as a look into the making of a film -- take it as a portrait of a great man with equally great imperfections. |
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| "Clint as the African King" | 2006-01-26 |
| - Reviewed By Bomojaz from South Central PA, USA |
Peter Viertel went to Africa with filmmaker John Huston to work on the script of THE AFRICAN QUEEN; from his experinces there he wrote the novel WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART. Here Clint Eastwood plays Houston, an egocentric man of action who becomes obsessed with killing a big-husked elephant - almost to the detriment of making THE AFRICAN QUEEN. Eastwood is uncanny (and at times forced and pretentious) as he tries to act and talk like the famous director, but in a way it's the perfect role for him: Huston as the bigger-than-life, Hemingway-like bully who believes in taking risks and being nonconformist mirrors Eastwood's Hollywood persona (think HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, JOSIE WALES, even DIRTY HARRY) as actor and director.
The movie is a multi-leveled look at Huston (named John Wilson), and we see he's a fighting man for what's right and decent (he gets in a fist fight over the mistreatment of a black servant), but at the same time he can be cruel to his friends and bosses and exploitive of others. And to his credit, Eastwood is faithful to this good/mostly bad portrayal, and there's no sugar-coating at the end. |
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| ""The only sin you can buy a license to commit."" | 2005-09-08 |
| - Reviewed By Trevor Willsmer from London, England |
White Hunter, Black Heart seems even more impressive today than when it came out, and certainly didn't deserve its fate as the biggest box-office disaster of Eastwood's career - the same year's unsuccessful release of The Rookie took ten times more money and even Pink Cadillac outgrossed it (and that never got released outside the US). Interestingly, it seems well aware of it's problem for a main stream audience and goes out of its way to prepare them for the huge shift of tone in the last reels, setting up its own dark ending with its wonderfully written and performed early arguments about lousy little gods deciding who lives or dies in the movies. Indeed, the first half is so much fun that you tend not to notice its setting up some big issues along the way - racism, anti-Semitism, honesty, obsession and above all morality. Morality and responsibility ignored in favor of indulgence and impulse, however charismatic and entertaining it may seem, run throughout the film as Eastwood's John Huston - sorry, John Wilson - sets out to commit "the only sin you can buy a license to commit."
It's easily Eastwood's most unusual and atypical performance, abandoning his own screen persona for a large as life approximation rather than an impersonation of John Huston: the vocal cadences are there but downplayed, along with the vainglory and self-awareness. It's a fine performance and just his bad luck that Angelica Huston was on the Cannes jury that year. (African Queen co-producer John Woolf also went out of his way to damn the film as `irresponsible lies' despite its admission that its fiction.) Visually the best looking of Eastwood's films as a director, possibly because it's shot in daylight for once (Eastwood has often commented on not having plastic surgery: true, but he does tend to turn all the lights out in interior scenes instead!), but also because the visual design is so interesting, particularly as Wilson increasingly sets himself apart from the rest of the cast and crew, relegated to brooding in foreground shadows. Impressive stuff, and very entertaining with it - and a quick nod to George Dzundza's thinly-disguised Sam Spiegel while I'm at it.
The widescreen 1.85:1 DVD transfer is good, but the only extra is a brief trailer. |
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