WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART

A strange sort of twist to the delineation of an erratic, egocentric film director, whose human relations provide a sort of recurrent pattern of wreckage dedicated to his emotional reversals John Wilson is presumably a genius; he is purported to be irresistible -- when he so desires; but to this reader no whisper of his charm emerges at any point. One of his ""victims"" is the narrator, as he records his futile attempts to keep Wilson on the path of preparing for the shooting of a picture in Africa. Wilson had the secret goal of a safari in search of big game; any conceivable attention to matters of location, construction, planning for the picture was discarded or perverted to his personal passions. And many and sundry fell before his whims. The fact that he couldn't shoot- knew nothing about it except what he read in a book- throws the whole into exagerated farce, with an undercurrent of impending disaster. The finale, in which he gets his elephant- and kills his man- makes the cry of the native villagers- ""white hunter, black heart"" meaningful.