White Hunter, Black Heart

CHATTING UP LEGEND

Clint Eastwood has the height and weight to play John Huston in White Hunter, Black Heart, and it’s fun listening to him trying to catch Huston’s speech patterns and arrogant gallantry. If you’ve read the novel by Peter Viertel which the movie is based on, and you’re knowledgeable about Huston as director and actor and about his personal life (at least what he allowed, or what others have confessed about him), then you know Eastwood has achieved only the flavor, not the full endowment, of both the man and the original source material. Since the book is essentially a two-man verbal sparring match, and intrinsically more entertaining as a read than as a movie, Eastwood’s version is by necessity a series of scenes about Huston’s irascible bravado occurring during the making of The African Queen. Viertel’s loaded title is deceptive: Huston was of course a giant of a bastard, a womanizer, a fighter, an instigator, a gambler, a hunter. The latter springs forth Viertel’s belief Huston’s heart was black—his love of hunting as proof of a disengagement from compassion and decency—when, in fact, Viertel was SPCAing his own repugnance over the sport. Yet he may have been more influential than Huston would ever admit because the director never did kill an elephant and later abandoned hunting altogether. The book and movie give credence to what may have been Huston’s greatest passion—the cunning construction of himself as a legend. Eastwood enjoys playing the old man; he chats up, embarrasses, puts down friends, acquaintances and enemies via Huston recitals as if mythic hero—he’s acting out Huston in Huston’s famous audience-pleasing mode. With Jeff Fahey as Viertel, who was asked by Huston to polish up The African Queen script after movie critic-screenwriter James Agee suffered a heart attack and was unable to travel to Africa.

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ralphbenner@nowreviewing.com