''White Hunter Black Heart'' is a 1990 American

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super- ...

produced, directed by, and starring

Clint Eastwood Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series '' Rawhide'', he rose to international fame with his role as the " Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "'' Do ...

and based on the 1953 book of the same name by Peter Viertel. Viertel also co-wrote the script with

James Bridges James Bridges (February 3, 1936June 6, 1993) was an American screenwriter, film director, producer, and actor. He is a two-time Oscar nominee: once for Best Original Screenplay for '' The China Syndrome'' and once for Best Adapted Screenplay fo ...

and

Burt Kennedy Burton Raphael Kennedy (September 3, 1922 – February 15, 2001) was an American screenwriter and director known mainly for directing Westerns. Budd Boetticher called him "the best Western writer ever." Biography Kennedy was born in 1922 i ...

. The film is a thinly disguised account of Viertel's experiences while working on the 1951 film '' The African Queen'', which was shot on location in Africa at a time when location shoots outside of the United States for American films were very rare. The main character, brash director John Wilson (played by Eastwood) is based on real-life director

John Huston John Marcellus Huston ( ; August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and visual artist. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered ...

. Jeff Fahey plays Pete Verrill, a character based on Viertel.

George Dzundza George Dzundza ( ; born July 19, 1945) is an American television and film actor. Early life and education Dzundza was born in Rosenheim, Germany, to a Ukrainian-Jewish father, Roman Dzundza, originally from Kalush, Ukraine, and a Polish-Jewish m ...

's character is based on ''African Queen'' producer

Sam Spiegel Samuel P. Spiegel (November 11, 1901December 31, 1985) was an American independent film producer born in the Galician area of Austria-Hungary. Financially responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed motion pictures of the 20th centur ...

Marisa Berenson Vittoria Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson (born February 15, 1947) is an American actress and model. She appeared on the front covers of ''Vogue'' and ''Time'', and won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as ...

's character Kay Gibson and Richard Vanstone's character Phil Duncan are based on

Katharine Hepburn Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress in film, stage, and television. Her career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned over 60 years. She was known for her headstrong independence, spirited perso ...

and

Humphrey Bogart Humphrey DeForest Bogart (; December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American film and stage actor. His performances in Classical Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film In ...

, respectively. This was the last film that James Bridges wrote the screenplay for before dying in 1993.

Plot

In the early 1950s, Pete Verrill is invited by his friend, director John Wilson, to rewrite the script for Wilson's latest project: a film with the working title of ''The African Trader''. The hard living, irreverent Wilson convinces producer Paul Landers to have the film completely shot on location in Africa, even though doing so would be extremely expensive. Wilson explains to Verrill that his motivation for this has nothing to do with the film - Wilson, a lifelong hunter, wants to fulfill his dream of going on an African safari; he even purchases a set of finely crafted hunting rifles and charges them to the studio. Upon landing in

Entebbe Entebbe is a city in Central Uganda. Located on a Lake Victoria peninsula, approximately southwest of the Ugandan capital city, Kampala. Entebbe was once the seat of government for the Protectorate of Uganda prior to independence, in 1962. Th ...

, Wilson and Verrill spend several days at a luxury hotel while Verrill finishes the script and Wilson makes arrangements for the safari. Verrill finds himself growing fond of Wilson after the latter defends him against a fellow guest who makes

antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...

remarks in front of Verrill (who happens to be Jewish) and challenges the hotel manager to a fistfight after witnessing him insult and belittle a black waiter for spilling a drink. The two men constantly argue over Verrill's changes to the script, particularly his insistence that Wilson does not use his original planned ending, where all of the main characters are killed on-screen. Wilson hires a pilot to fly him and Verrill out to the hunting camp of safari guide Zibelinsky and his African tracker Kivu, whom Wilson is quick to bond with. The film's unit director, Ralph Lockhart, is also present and insists that Wilson start pre-production before the cast arrives, to which Wilson replies he'll do so after he shoots a "tusker". Verrill gradually becomes disenchanted with Wilson, who keeps going out to hunt despite his poor health and seems completely indifferent to the success of his movie. He even questions why Wilson would want to kill such a magnificent beast. Confronted, Wilson tells Verrill off and accuses him of "playing it safe" and not wanting to risk anything. He calls hunting a "sin that you can get a license for" and doesn't try to convince Verrill otherwise when he threatens to resign and go back to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. Landers arrives in Entebbe and insists that Verrill stay on, revealing that the studio is at risk of bankruptcy if the movie isn't finished. When Verrill does return, he is informed by Lockhart that Wilson, without consulting anyone, has decided to move the entire production to Kivu's home village despite Landers spending most of the budget on a prefabricated set. The cast, now unable to stay at the hotel, go to Zibelinsky's camp and find Wilson waiting for them with a lavish banquet. He humiliates Landers and takes advantage of several days of rain to resume his safari, now accompanied by professional elephant hunter Ogilvy. Verrill follows after Wilson again taunts him for cowardice. Wilson finally gets his chance to kill the "tusker", but when the time comes to shoot, he suddenly finds he can't pull the trigger. The elephant suddenly charges after seeing its child move too close to Wilson, and Kivu tries to scare it off only to be fatally gored by the elephant's tusks. Wilson, horrified by Kivu's death, returns to the set. He sees the villagers beating drums and asks Ogilvy what they mean. Ogilvy replies that they are communicating to everyone how Kivu died: "white hunter, black heart". Recognizing that he is ultimately to blame for what happened, Wilson tells Verrill that he was right: the film does need a happy ending after all. Sitting in his director's chair as the actors and crew take their places to film the opening scene of ''The African Trader'', a now humbled and broken Wilson silently mutters "Action".

Cast

as John Wilson *

Jeff Fahey Jeffrey David Fahey (, born November 29, 1952) is an American film and television actor. He has portrayed Captain Frank Lapidus on the ABC series ''Lost'' and the title role of Deputy Marshal Winston MacBride on ''The Marshal''. Early life an ...

as Pete Verrill * Alun Armstrong as Ralph Lockhart, unit director *

as Paul Landers * Charlotte Cornwell as Miss Wilding, Wilson's secretary *

Norman Lumsden Norman Lumsden (16 September 1906 – 28 November 2001) was a British opera singer and actor. He first came to prominence during the 1940s and 1950s in several operas by composer Benjamin Britten, often performing at Covent Garden and the Alde ...

as George, Wilson's butler *

as Kay Gibson * Richard Vanstone as Phil Duncan *

Catherine Neilson Catherine Neilson (born 3 October 1957) is a British stage, television and film actress, who was active from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. Career On stage, Neilson starred as Christie in ''Traps'' by Caryl Churchill, at the Royal Court Theatre ...

as Irene Saunders, an aspiring writer who pitches her film to Wilson * Edward Tudor-Pole as Reissar, British partner *

Roddy Maude-Roxby Roderick A. Maude-Roxby (born 2 April 1930) is a retired English actor. He has appeared in numerous films, such as Walt Disney's ''The Aristocats'', where he voiced the greedy butler Edgar Balthazar (his only voice role); ''Unconditional Love''; ...

as Thompson, British partner *

Richard Warwick Richard Warwick (29 April 1945 – 16 December 1997) was an English actor. He was born Richard Carey Winter, the third of four sons, at Meopham, Kent, and made his film debut in Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' in the r ...

as Basil Fields, British partner * Boy Mathias Chuma as Kivu *

Timothy Spall Timothy Leonard Spall (born 27 February 1957) is an English actor and presenter. He became a household name in the UK after appearing as Barry Spencer Taylor in the 1983 ITV comedy-drama series '' Auf Wiedersehen, Pet''. Spall performed in '' ...

as Hodkins, bush pilot

Production

During the 1950s,

Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and ...

wrote an unproduced version of the film for MGM. At times, Eastwood, as the John Huston-like character of John Wilson, can be heard drawing out his vowels, speaking in Huston's distinctive style. The film was shot on location in

Kariba, Zimbabwe Kariba is a resort town in Mashonaland West provinces of Zimbabwe, province, Zimbabwe, located close to the Kariba Dam at the north-eastern end of Lake Kariba, near the Zambian border. According to the 2022 Population Census, the town had a popul ...

, and surrounds including at

Lake Kariba Lake Kariba is the world's largest artificial lake and reservoir by volume. It lies upstream from the Indian Ocean, along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Lake Kariba was filled between 1958 and 1963 following the completion of the K ...

Victoria Falls Victoria Falls ( Lozi: ''Mosi-oa-Tunya'', "The Smoke That Thunders"; Tonga: ''Shungu Namutitima'', "Boiling Water") is a waterfall on the Zambezi River in southern Africa, which provides habitat for several unique species of plants and anim ...

, and

Hwange Hwange (formerly Wankie) is a town in Zimbabwe, located in Hwange District, in Matabeleland North Province, in northwestern Zimbabwe, close to the international borders with Botswana and Zambia. It lies approximately , by road, southeast of ...

,Production designer

John Graysmark John Graysmark (26 March 1935 – 10 October 2010) was a British production designer. He was nominated for two Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction. Graysmark was involved with film from an early age, through his father, who w ...

interview, ''Cue International'' May 1990. over two months in the summer of 1989.Hughes, Howard, ''Aim for the Heart: The Films of Clint Eastwood'', p.144, I.B. Tauris, London, 2009, . Some interiors were shot in and around

Pinewood Studios Pinewood Studios is a British film and television studio located in the village of Iver Heath, England. It is approximately west of central London. The studio has been the base for many productions over the years from large-scale films to t ...

in England. The boat used in the film was constructed in England of glass fibre and shipped to Africa for filming. It was electrically powered, and was fitted with motors and engines by special-effects expert John Evans to make the boat appear to be steam-powered. The elephant gun used in the film was a £65,000 double-barrelled rifle of the type preferred by most professional hunters and their clients in this era. It was made by Holland & Holland, the gunmakers who also made the gun used by Huston when he was in Africa for ''The African Queen'' in 1951. The ''White Hunter Black Heart'' filmmakers took great care with the gun and sold it back to Holland & Holland after filming "unharmed, unscratched, unused."

Critical reception

The film was entered into the

1990 Cannes Film Festival The 43rd Cannes Film Festival was held from 10 to 21 May 1990. The Palme d'Or went to '' Wild at Heart'' by David Lynch. The festival opened with '' Dreams'', directed by Akira Kurosawa and closed with ''The Comfort of Strangers'', directed by Pau ...

. The film received positive reviews with review tallying website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

reporting that 30 out of the 36 reviews they tallied were positive giving a 83% rating. The consensus reads: "''White Hunter Black Heart'' is powerful, intelligent, and subtly moving, a fascinating meditation on masculinity and the insecurities of artists." The film has grown significantly in critical stature, especially in light of the films Eastwood made immediately afterwards. Many of these, like ''White Hunter, Black Heart'', turned out to be self-reflexive and self-conscious works criticizing and deconstructing Eastwood's own iconography.

Jim Hoberman James Lewis Hoberman (born March 14, 1949) is an American film critic, journalist, author and academic. He began working at '' The Village Voice'' in the 1970s, became a full-time staff writer in 1983, and was the newspaper's senior film critic ...

of ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the cr ...

'' hailed it as "Eastwood’s best work before ''Unforgiven''... nunderrated hall-of-mirrors movie about movie-inspired megalomania."

Dave Kehr David Kehr (born 1953) is an American museum curator and film critic. For many years a critic at the '' Chicago Reader'' and the ''Chicago Tribune,'' he later wrote a weekly column for ''The New York Times'' on DVD releases. He later became a ...

and Jonathan Rosenbaum consider it a masterpiece, with the latter pointing out the

Brechtian Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

nature of Eastwood's performance, as he never disappears into the role he is playing; instead, Eastwood is always recognizably his unique star persona while showing us what he imagines Huston (i.e. Wilson) to have been. The result is "a running commentary on his two subjects, Huston and himself—the ruminations and questions of a free man."

Box office

''White Hunter Black Hearts gross theatrical earnings reached just over $2 million, well below the film's $24 million budget.

References

External links

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Movie stills
{{Clint Eastwood 1990 films 1990s action films 1990 drama films American adventure drama films 1990s English-language films Films about films Films about film directors and producers Films directed by Clint Eastwood Films produced by Clint Eastwood Malpaso Productions films Films about hunters Films shot in Zimbabwe Films set in Africa Films about elephants Films shot in Zambia Films à clef Films scored by Lennie Niehaus Cultural depictions of Humphrey Bogart Warner Bros. films 1990s American films