Clint Eastwood, who has officially retired, directed and starred in 80 movies, and the Hollywood star has several hidden gems buried within his filmography.
The 96-year-old’s widely known classics include Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, crime drama Dirty Harry, revisionist western Unforgiven and boxing weepie Million Dollar Baby – but one film riding beneath the surface is White Hunter, Black Heart.
The film, released in 1990, was a box office flop upon release, grossing just $2m (£1.4m) from a $24m (£17.8m) budget. But over the years, it’s generated a cult status, with many agreeing it’s his filmmaking peak before winning an Oscar for Unforgiven just two years later.
Eastwood’s directorial efforts beforehand included crime dramas (Play Misty for Me – 1971; Sudden Impact – 1986) and several westerns (High Plains Drifter – 1973;The Outlaw Josey Wales – 1976; Heartbreak Ridge – 1986), but the late 1980s saw him start deviating from the expected genre by making a biopic of saxophonist Charlie Parker (Bird – 1988) as well as White Hunter, Black Heart. The film is an adventure drama about film director John Wilson, who becomes increasingly erratic as he makes a film on location in Africa.
White Hunter, Black Heart is based on Peter Viertel’s 1953 book of the same name, which is a thinly disguised account of his experiences working on 1951 film The African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn.
Eastwood’s character in White Hunter, Black Heart, then, is based on The African Queen ‘s director, John Huston. It was posited that Huston spent much of the film’s gruelling shoot in the Congo and Uganda, swigging whiskey and hunting big game.
In White Hunter, Black Heart – a riveting tale of an uncontrollable ego – Wilson is shown to become increasingly interested in tracking down one particular elephant, much to the frustration of the cast and crew around him.
Viertel co-wrote the script with James Bridges (The China Syndrome) and Burt Kennedy, who wrote Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station – westerns directed by Budd Boetticher in 1959 and 1960, respectively.
Eastwood is one of the most successful actors-turned-directors, and is known for his quick-speed directorial style, often wrapping ahead of schedule and under budget.
His son, composer Kyle Eastwood, who scored several of his father’s films, officially confirmed Clint’s retirement earlier this month.
He said at a gig in November, in a video that’s currently doing the rounds online: “I have many fond memories of working with him. Now, he’s retired, he’s 95 years old. But I was very lucky to be able to work with him on quite a few films. It was a great experience for me.”
Eastwood’s last film as director was the 2024 legal thriller Juror No 2, with his last screen appearance in 2021 western thriller Cry Macho.
