Cannes Makes His Day : Movies: Clint Eastwood’s ‘White Hunter’ is his third film to be premiered as an official entry in the festival.

For the third time in seven years, a Clint Eastwood-directed movie has made its world premiere as an official entry in the Cannes Film Festival. Whether the third time proves a charm, Eastwood says he’s charmed by the attention.

“I came here twice before and enjoyed it both times,” Eastwood said, gazing out at a press conference crowd that was spilling out of a beachfront ballroom. “It was a wonderful, responsible time, so it was fun to be invited back.”

Eastwood has been one of Hollywood’s most popular exports for nearly three decades and though neither “Pale Rider” nor “Bird”--his previous Cannes entries--earned him a prize, the films were huge successes with the international audiences here.

The reaction to “White Hunter, Black Heart,” a film based on the late director John Huston’s obsession with elephant hunting during the preproduction of “The African Queen,” seemed much more subdued, even though dozens of journalists jostled for position to get the director’s autograph after the hourlong press conference.

“White Hunter,” which premiered Friday night, will be perceived as one of Eastwood’s “other movies”--those that Warner Bros. patiently endures while waiting for his next “Dirty Harry.” The list of Eastwood indulgences includes some of his best--if least commercial--films: “Bronco Billy,” “Honky Tonk Man” and “Bird.”

Warner Bros. is releasing “White Hunter” in France next week, but it won’t reach U.S. theaters before September.

In “White Hunter” Eastwood takes one of his longest stretches as an actor, portraying--in voice and manner--the middle-aged John Huston in the midst of a dangerous obsession.

The movie is adapted from a 1953 novel written by Peter Viertel, who went to Africa with Huston in the late ‘40s to help complete the script for “The African Queen” and witnessed Huston’s dissolve into near madness.

Viertel, now 75 and living in Spain with his wife, Deborah Kerr, fictionalized the names of Huston, producer Sam Spiegel and himself in the book, and the tragic consequences of the director’s action portrayed in both the book and the film were fabricated. That Huston’s obsession with killing an elephant, the bad blood it caused between him and Viertel, and the jeopardy in which it placed production of what--despite it all--became a movie classic were all real.

“John was a gifted filmmaker but he was also a supreme egotist,” Viertel says. “He would get distracted by some personal whim and he would have his way no matter what.”

Viertel believes it was the opportunity to hunt big game that tempted Huston to take “The African Queen” assignment in the first place, and he treated everyone as a traitor who didn’t share his passion for the hunt.

The author, who objected to the hunting of any big game, said he wrote the novel as an open letter to Huston, whom he believed was squandering his talents on his obsessions, and despite reviews that accused the author of back-stabbing his mentor, he said Huston liked the book.

“He offered to sign a release before he’d even seen it,” Viertel says. “After he read the first draft, he suggested a different ending, which I used, then he never mentioned the book to me again.”

Eastwood said it was Huston’s abandonment of responsibility after having taken on the responsibility of making a movie that drew his interest in the project. And as it happened with “Bird,” it was Eastwood’s interest that brought a well traveled script before the camera.

“White Hunter” was shot last summer in Zimbabwe, with the cooperation of the government there. The film has a definite environmental slant, but Eastwood said he did not take on the project to make any environmental points.

Eastwood said he never met Huston, who died just after the “White Hunter” project got under way. And his portrayal of the venerated director may be the most discussed element of the film. Asked why he chose to play the fictional John Wilson in the distinct manner of the real John Huston, who is as well known to some people as an actor as he was as a director, Eastwood said “What’s the point of doing it if you don’t try to stretch yourself?”

“White Hunter” is one of 18 films from 10 countries in competition for the Gold Palm. Among its rivals are two other American-financed films--Alan Parker’s “Come See the Paradise” and David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart.” Paul Schrader, who was here five years ago with “Mishima,” will attend the world premiere of his “The Comfort of Strangers,” the closing-night film being shown out of competition.

The festival opened Thursday night with “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams,” an impressionistic anthology of eight vignettes that the 80-year-old Japanese director said were adapted from his own remembered dreams.

“Dreams,” also a Warner Bros. film, opened in Paris on Friday and will be released in the United States sometime this fall.

Other noted filmmakers with pictures in the formal program here are France’s Bertrand Tavernier and Jean Luc-Godard, Italy’s Federico Fellini and Vittorio and Paolo Taviani, and Poland’s Andrzej Wajda.

The festival runs through May 21.