White Hunter, Black Heart

From early on in his career, Clint Eastwood has been interested in taking the path less traveled when it came to his career, taking on roles and making films that often subverted his Hollywood icon image. In particular, the films he has directed explore the darker side of humanity with topics ranging from stalking (Play Misty for Me), drug addiction (Bird), violence (Unforgiven), and child abuse (Mystic River). White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) is no different. Based loosely on Peter Viertel’s experiences working with legendary film director John Huston on The African Queen (1951), Eastwood plays John Wilson, a filmmaker more interested in hunting down and killing a wild elephant then making his next motion picture. He becomes fixated on this quest and Eastwood uses this story as an opportunity to explore the notion of obsession and how it can consume someone at the expense of everything else in their life.


White Hunter, Black Heart played several prestigious film festivals around the world and was admired by many critics but was never a commercial hit with audiences perhaps expecting an exciting adventure. What they got instead was something more akin to an art film that saw Eastwood yet again subvert the Dirty Harry persona that has defined his career for many years. White Hunter has become something of a forgotten effort in his filmography and considered a minor work but I’ve always felt that it was one of his more interesting pictures.

From the get-go, it is easy to see what drew Eastwood to this film. The opening voiceover narration describes his character John Wilson as “a brilliant, screw-you-all type filmmaker who continually violated all the unwritten laws of the motion picture business yet had the magic, almost divine ability to always land on his feet.” These words could easily be describing Eastwood and his career – one that saw him frequently go against prevailing trends to make the kinds of films he wanted to do. Wilson is gearing up to make a film in Africa and enlists the help of his good friend and screenwriter Peter Verrill (Jeff Fahey) to give the screenplay a rewrite. Pete’s not so sure as he’s working on a book and Wilson tells him, “There are times when you can’t wonder whether it’s the right or wrong thing to do … You just gotta pack up and go.” While they are there making the film, Wilson wants to go on safari and bag an elephant.

Wilson and Pete meet with the film’s producer Paul Landers (George Dzundza) who implores the writer to come on board if only to keep Wilson focused on the task at hand. It’s an entertaining scene as we see Wilson’s open disdain for Landers and the money men, especially when one of them informs the director that they’ve talked about replacing him with someone else. Wilson knows that all Landers cares about is that the film makes money no matter how just so long as it does. As he tells the exasperated producer, “You’d sell your mother down the river to make a deal.” Pete observes it all with the bemused expression of someone who has seen Wilson act this way before and is just enjoying the ride. The director doesn’t care about the business side of filmmaking – dealing with nervous producers and studio executives and every person who pitches him a lame idea for a film.

The chemistry between Clint Eastwood and Jeff Fahey is excellent in these early scenes as we see how well they play off each other, Wilson trying to convince Pete to do this film with him and the writer not really needing much convincing. The two actors do a nice job of conveying two men who have been friends for years by the way they act towards each other. In a nice, self-flexive bit, Wilson lays out his filmmaking philosophy but it could easily be Eastwood as he tells Pete that there’s two ways to go about it: “One is you can crawl and kiss ass and write their happy endings, sign their long-term contracts and never take a chance on anything and never fly, never leave Hollywood. Save all your goddamn money, every cent of it … The other way is to let the chips fall where they may. Refuse to sign their contracts and tell off the guy who can cut your throat and flatter the little guy who’s hanging by a thread that you hold.” Wilson is the quintessential film maverick and on the surface he certainly seems like one of Eastwood’s usual anti-authority protagonists – the cynic with a heart of gold. Wilson talks a good game, like how much he hates the movie business, but Pete knows him well enough to know that the curmudgeonly director wouldn’t have it any other way because he enjoys and thrives on conflict. It stimulates his creativity.

Once Wilson and Pete arrive in Africa, Eastwood opens the film up visually with stunning shots of the wilderness courtesy of long-time collaborator Jack N. Green and this gives a real sense of place. It’s a sharp contrast to the stuffy opulence of Wilson’s English mansion. There are also gorgeous aerial shots of herds of wild animals running across the plains. Eastwood really shows the exotic locale in all of its diverse glory: large lakes, jungle and dense wooded areas.

Wilson and Pete encounter quite a bit of racism from their English hosts. For example, there is the man who curses out and chastises the local team of football players for easily beating his team of all whites, or the posh wealthy woman who criticizes the Jewish people that lived in Soho during the Blitz in World War II. Wilson is disgusted with both of their attitudes and gets into a fist fight with the former and tells off the latter by recounting a hilarious story that really puts her in her place. Eastwood does a fantastic job of delivering this monologue with a mischievous twinkle in his eye as Wilson stands up for his friend Pete (who is Jewish). With the fist fight scene, we get a glimpse of Wilson’s self-destructive tendencies. Drunk and clearly outmatched physically, Wilson gets in a few good shots before being beaten down by the larger, stronger man. However, he feels justified in doing what he did because he stood up and fought for what he believed in.

While Pete continues to fine tune the script, Wilson plans their safari with the occasional detours to pre-production on the film. The director is all about testing his own limits, whether it is challenging a large man to a fight or taking a rusted out old river boat through dangerous river rapids. For him, that is what life is all about – experiencing it to the fullest with no regrets, much like I imagine Eastwood’s own outlook on life. Wilson thinks that bagging one of those giant elephants is a life experience he’s meant to have and becomes obsessed with it. Pete lets him know that he doesn’t want to shoot one because they are beautiful animals, a rare link to life before humans, which deserve to exist. There is something pure about them and shooting one would destroy that nobility, which is a rarity in this world. Over the course of the film, Wilson and Pete’s friendship is put to the test as the writer tries to keep the director focused on making the film.

Some critics felt that Eastwood miscast himself as a John Huston-type filmmaker but I think that what he does in White Hunter, Black Heart is fuse parts of Huston’s sensibilities with his own. In some respects, the two men are very much alike: larger than life icons that continued to make films well into the twilight of their lives, constantly bucking expectations and latching onto projects that interested them whether they were commercial hits or not. Eastwood understands the nature of obsession and how it can lead to self-destructive behavior.

Jeff Fahey is well cast as the audience surrogate and voice of reason. Pete may be Wilson’s friend but he won’t blindly follow him on every grand adventure that the director wants to pursue. Fahey brings an intelligence to the role, playing a character that has his own strong convictions and just doesn’t follow his friend around without question. The actor was on the verge of becoming a breakout star in the 1990’s with this film and The Lawnmower Man (1992) but for whatever reason his career didn’t take off like it should have and he ended up making a lot of forgettable genre films and television shows until as of late when he landed significant roles in high profile projects like Lost and Planet Terror (2007). It’s good to see this underrated actor enjoying a resurgence of sorts.

To say that The African Queen had a checked production history is a massive understatement. Most of the film was shot in Uganda and the Belgian Congo. Producer Sam Spiegel mortgaged his home in London and borrowed the rest while Huston made him sweat right up to the moment of filming with his indecisive nature. Spiegel put the film’s stars Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart (along with his wife Lauren Bacall) in an expensive hotel with no way to pay their bills. The cast and crew flew to their first location only to find out that the rains had come, which delayed filming. Instead of preparing for the project, Huston got the urge to shoot an elephant and took off on safari. The river that the director decided to shoot the film on was infected with bilharzias, a parasitic disease, Spiegel was bitten by a tarantula and almost died, while Hepburn drank only water and was stricken with dysentery. Peter Viertel, a novelist and screenwriter, had been hired to work on James Agee’s screenplay. He witnessed, first hand, Huston’s behavior and two years later published a little-read novel that fictionalized what had gone down. Incredibly, Huston actually liked Viertel’s book, signed off on it and even recommended a more tragic ending.

Over the years, the rights to the novel passed from producer to producer with Burt Lancaster showing interest at one point. Several screenplays based on the story were commissioned but it wasn’t until Eastwood was given a copy of the novel by veteran film producer Ray Stark that there was an actual possibility it would get made into a film. He read it on the way back from Italy where he had been promoting the Charlie Parker biopic Bird (1988). In the past, filmmakers had stayed away from the project because Huston was still alive, the lead character wasn’t very likeable and it didn’t have a happy ending. This didn’t seem to bother Eastwood who used his clout with Warner Brothers to get it made. He was drawn to the story because he liked Huston’s attitude and his speeches about taking chances, not being afraid to try something different, and not caring what the audience thought. He also had an understanding of the Wilson character. “Now, I’ve never felt I wanted to kill wildlife,” Eastwood said in an interview with The Guardian, “or anything like that, but I think there’s a bit of him in my nature … You want to break out of what you’re doing and live differently sometimes. It’s something you have to prove to yourself.”

Early on in development, Eastwood restored the book’s unhappy ending because he felt that it was more faithful to the source material. Originally, he looked at shooting White Hunter, Black Heart in Kenya but the authorities there wanted input on the script and he had heard that there was real demand for bribes in order to do business. Zimbabwe was much more filmmaking friendly with the government being very accommodating to the production and so most of the film was shot there.

White Hunter, Black Heart divided mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “In the early scenes of White Hunter, Black Heart, Eastwood fans are likely to be distracted to hear Huston's words and vocal mannerisms in Eastwood's mouth, and to see Huston's swagger and physical bravado. Then the performance takes over, and the movie turns into one of the more thoughtful films ever made about the conflicts inside an artist.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel praised Eastwood’s performance: “Eastwood has dared to attempt a faithful impression of the director, his growling drawl, his loose-limbed stride, the arrogant tilt of his head. The result is a stretch for him as an actor, and fun for the audience.” In his review for the Globe and Mail, Jay Scott wrote, “White Hunter, Black Heart is a beautifully made elaboration of a thesis that has thankfully lost its antithesis to time.”

However, in her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “And none of it works as fully as Mr. Eastwood obviously wants it to, as a consequence of the sheer sweep and colorfulness of the man being portrayed. But even in this relatively stiff, sometimes awkward form, the John Wilson character is as compelling as Mr. Eastwood's desire to play him.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “C+” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “In the end, though, White Hunter, Black Heart emerges as little more than a plodding shadow of the great film it could have been. An actor making a stretch is one thing. As Huston, Eastwood is so out of his depth he seems to have lost his entertainer's instinct, not to mention his modesty.” The Toronto Star’s Peter Goddard found fault with Eastwood’s performance but not Jeff Fahey’s: “It is Fahey's Verrill who has the power of self-absorption that Eastwood's paper-thin Wilson lacks. Any question about Eastwood's insecurities should probably stop with this film because – as its director – he's given Fahey, a vividly handsome actor, every chance he can to steal scenes. And Fahey, aware of what he's been given, does just that.” USA Today gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars and Mike Clark wrote, “Yet despite one of Eastwood's more respectable directing jobs, we never sense the method to his madness – or even if it is madness. Nor can Jeff Fahey lick his own character's novelistic origins: the first-person narrator (and Trader script doctor) who by himself isn't too compelling.” Finally, the Washington Post’s Rita Kempley felt that, “White Hunter, Black Heart is not about the making of The African Queen. It's Mondo Machismo, Hollywood on safari, a self-aggrandizing epic reeking of man scent.”

In the end, Wilson realizes that he’s not the rugged protagonist from one of his films but a film director who is sabotaging his own motion picture with this foolhardy quest. He finally acknowledges that nothing good can come of his obsession and that he must make a decision – continue to pursue it despite the consequences or let it go and focus on things that really matter. Unfortunately, he learns this at a painful cost and Eastwood doesn’t let Wilson off easy. His obsession has terrible consequences and the shameful expression on his face at the end of White Hunter, Black Heart suggests that it is something that will haunt him and that he will have to live with for the rest of his days.


Also, check out Joe Valdez's excellent look at this film over at his blog, This Distracted Globe.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I’m not a huge fan of westerns. I could count my favorites on one hand but at the top of the list is Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), an epic story about three men’s pursuit of a chest of gold during the American Civil War. In fact, this film is one of my favorites of all-time. Instead of doing my usual in-depth examination of the film’s production, which has been covered in definitive detail in Christopher Frayling’s excellent Leone biography Something to Do with Death, I’ve decided to take a look at some of my favorite scenes.

The way Sergio Leone introduces the film’s three main characters says so much about them. Tuco a.k.a. The Ugly (Eli Wallach) is the film’s wild, uncontrollable id and the humanistic character of the three in the sense that he has all of the foibles and weaknesses that we all do. He is one of the most lethal, yet ungraceful characters in the western genre. His introduction sets up what a formidable opponent he is as he quickly dispatches three men come to kill him. Tuco crashes through a storefront window with a gun in one hand and a huge chunk of meat and bottle of wine clenched in the other, which perfectly captures the wild, untamable essence of his character. Not even a freeze frame that Leone employs at one point during this sequence slows Tuco down. He is a character of extremes.

Angel Eyes a.k.a. The Bad (Lee Van Cleef) is a cold-blooded killer and Leone captures the menace in the man’s eyes in his first close-up. With this shot Leone establishes that Angel Eyes is pure evil. He visits a man who knows the identity of someone who helped steal a box of gold. He spends a few minutes staring the poor man down, never taking his eyes off him, even while eating, which has to be pretty damn unnerving. The film’s first bit of dialogue is finally spoken in this scene, ten-and-a-half minutes in (including opening credits), which demonstrates Leone’s mastery of visual storytelling. For me, the key bit of dialogue in this scene is when Angel Eyes tells the man, “But when I’m paid, I always see the job through.” He then proceeds to kill the man and his youngest son without hesitation. If that wasn’t bad enough, Angel Eyes goes back to the man who hired him and kills him too because the other man paid him to and, of course, he always sees the job through. There’s a fantastic last shot of Angel Eyes blowing out the room’s lamp and in doing so, disappears into the darkness with a bit of ominous scoring by Ennio Morricone.

Blondie a.k.a. The Good’s (Clint Eastwood) introduction has to be one of the coolest in cinematic history. Three men capture Tuco, who is a wanted fugitive, and one of them says, “You know you got a face beautiful enough to be worth $2,000?” And then a voice off-camera says, “Yeah. But you don’t look like the one who’ll collect it.” Blondie then steps in view, coolly lights a cigar and guns down the men with brutal efficiency. Leone prolongs a shot of Blondie’s face as long as possible until we find out that he and Tuco have a deal. Blondie captures Tuco and brings him in for the reward money. He then rescues Tuco before he’s hanged to death and they repeat the process as the reward money increases. When Blondie brings Tuco in to the authorities, the fugitive lets loose a hilarious string of insults and curses directed at his captors. No one can quite say the word, “bastard” with the same kind of passion and venom as Eli Wallach does in this scene.

Later, as Blondie and Tuco split up the reward, the two men talk about the risks each takes in their endeavors. Tuco gives Blondie a warning that says a lot about his character: “Whoever double-crosses me and leaves me alive, he understands nothing about Tuco.” He laughs and in a nice bit, chews on one of Blondie’s cigar. I always wondered if that last bit was improvised by Wallach as it has a spontaneous feel to it. However, when Blondie decides to end his partnership with Tuco, he foolishly does not heed the outlaw’s warning and leaves him alive, even if it is the middle of nowhere. Blondie is a fool if he thinks that will kill Tuco, or maybe he just doesn’t care and figures that they will never meet again.

Angel Eyes witnesses Blondie and Tuco’s routine and responds to a woman who expresses relief that Tuco is being hanged by telling her, “People with ropes around their necks don’t always hang.” She asks him to explain and he replies, “Even a filthy beggar like that has got a protective angel.” Blondie is only heroic in an ironic sense. Leone underlines this notion at one point when he uses a faux angelic musical cue by Morricone to play over a shot of Blondie about to “rescue” Tuco from a hangman’s noose. Angel Eyes tells the woman, “A golden-haired angel watches over him.” Blondie is a mercenary but he does have his moments of compassion. He may be an efficient killer but unlike Angel Eyes he only kills when it is absolutely necessary or for profit.

Leone plays with our notions of good and evil with these three characters. Blondie isn’t truly good in the traditional sense but he is within the context of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Angel Eyes is truly bad, a pure killing machine who is in it only for the gold and not above repeatedly and viciously slapping a woman around in order to get information out of her. There is a glint in Van Cleef’s eye that suggests Angel Eyes enjoys making others afraid through physical intimidation. He is also very cunning and smart. He knows it would be pointless to torture Blondie when he is held captive at the Union Army Prisoner of War camp because he would never talk, as opposed to Tuco who will do or say anything to save his own skin.

Tuco is actually the film’s only sympathetic character. Sure, he is a liar and he’s crude but he also straddles the line between good and evil — at times he is one or the other — much like most people in real life. He is also quite smart as evident in the scene where he expertly assembles his own custom revolver. The others underestimate him and think that he’s stupid, but he’s quite cunning. If anything, he’s a survivor that repeatedly escapes death during the course of the film. While Angel Eyes is pure evil, Tuco is just out for himself and therein lies the crucial difference between the two characters.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is a marvel of editing. For example, the scene where Tuco and his three henchmen ambush Blondie is edited in such a way that there is an incredible amount of tension created from cutting back and forth from Blondie cleaning his gun, Tuco’s men quietly approaching his room, and the army marching outside. We are left wondering if the sounds of the army will make it impossible for Blondie to hear the approaching ambush in time and if he will be able to re-assemble his gun in time. Almost no music is used during this scene, just ambient sounds and this helps ratchet up the tension even more.

A lot of people forget that The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is also a devastating critique of the American Civil War. For example, there’s a scene where Angel Eyes walks through bombed out ruins and finds all kinds of wounded Confederate soldiers. He talks to their Commanding Officer who accepts a bottle of alcohol in exchange for information. We see this again when Tuco takes Blondie to a mission to nurse him back to health after nearly killing him in the desert. They go through a room full of wounded Confederate soldiers – more casualties of this costly war. There’s also Blondie and Tuco’s time spent at a Union Army P.O.W. camp where Angel Eyes poses as an officer who tortures prisoners for information. Finally, the harshest commentary on the Civil War comes when Blondie and Tuco are captured by the Union Army and meet the Captain who is a jaded drunk. He tells them about the “stupid, useless bridge” that his men fight over with the Confederate Army two times a day because it is a strategic spot, but he dreams of seeing it destroyed. And that’s just what Blondie and Tuco do in a brilliantly choreographed sequence. At this point, the Captain has been mortally wounded but before he dies, he hears the bridge detonating and gives a smile before dying. It was Blondie’s idea to blow up the bridge for the Captain and this act is not only a nice thing to do for the man but also allows him and Tuco to cross the river as the two armies leave, no longer having anything to fight over.

Even though The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is operatic on an epic scale it is the relationships between the three main characters that makes the film so good. In particular, the relationship between Tuco and Blondie is one of the film’s strengths. They often double cross each other and have a real love-hate relationship but at the film’s end, Blondie shows mercy for Tuco’s fate. It goes without saying that it is the talent of the three lead actors that makes these characters so interesting to watch. Clint Eastwood comes from the less is more school of acting and suggests a lot from doing or saying very little. In sharp contrast is Eli Wallach’s flamboyant, over-the-top performance as Tuco. If Eastwood is all about minimalism, then Wallach lets it all hang out. Finally, Lee Van Cleef is a confident, malevolent force of nature — the pure essence of evil.

One of Eli Wallach’s finest moments in the film is when he tries to get Eastwood’s character, who is near-death, to tell him the name on the grave that contains the chest of gold. Wallach goes through a whole range of emotions as Tuco tries every trick that he knows to get the name (including using a friendly approach, begging and even crying) but no dice. It’s a wonderful scene and one that shows Wallach’s range and skill as an actor. Even more revealing is the next scene between Tuco and his brother, which provides all kinds of insight into his character. Tuco’s brother condemns his sibling’s wicked ways and past, but Tuco replies passionately, “Where we came from, if one did not want to die of poverty, one became a priest or a bandit. You chose your way, I chose mine. Mine was harder!” For all of his bravado, this is a moment where Tuco shows a vulnerable side and it adds another layer to this fascinating character.

What I’ve always found interesting is that we never find out if Tuco could beat Blondie in a gunfight. At the film’s climactic showdown, Blondie beats Angel Eyes but he tricks Tuco by not having any bullets in the outlaw’s gun. Is it because he knows that Tuco is faster on the draw? Or is he simply hedging his bets knowing that he could outdraw Angel Eyes but that would leave him little time to shoot Tuco before he shoots him. Alas, we will never know. Living up to his moniker, Blondie doesn’t kill him even though he could. He messes with him a little bit by putting him in a hangman’s noose just like Tuco did to him earlier in the film. However, he gives Tuco enough slack so that he doesn’t die and leaves him some of the gold. Blondie can’t kill Tuco because, despite everything he does in the film, he is easy to like. Again, Blondie only kills when necessary. Of course this doesn’t stop Tuco from shouting out one more curse as a parting shot and a great way to end the film.

The three men system that Leone applies to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is one of the best plot devices ever. While it’s true that Blondie is no saint he is as close to the traditional definition of “good” as you’re going to get out of a bounty hunter. Angel Eyes is pure evil and Tuco has worked with both of them so what does that make him aside from the “ugly” moniker? He has aspects of both Angel Eyes and Blondie. It’s true that Tuco robs a store for his gun but it is done from a perspective that makes is somewhat sympathetic. Tuco is like most of us, forever unable to decide if he’s all good or all evil. He allies himself to both so that he can call on either depending on the situation. Hence, his shifting alliances with Blondie and Angel Eyes. He knows that Blondie and Angel Eyes will never become a team because Angel Eyes is only using Blondie for the name on the tombstone and Blondie is just looking for a way out.

I think that one of the things I love most about this film is how Leone takes his time and lets scenes play out, using editing only when necessary, when it fits the tone and mood of a given scene, like the aforementioned climactic duel where we get all of these insane close-ups of each man’s hands, eyes, guns and so on. The tension builds and builds for what seems like forever until you’re ready to go insane and yell at the screen, “shoot already!” And then, of course, it all plays out in a few seconds. How brilliant is that? The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is one of those rare films that works on several levels, some that only reveal themselves upon subsequent viewings. While many champion Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) as Leone’s greatest achievement, I have always felt that The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was the best thing he ever made – a perfect marriage of epic scale and an intimate, character-driven story.