17-year-old Lonnie Bannon (Brandon de Wilde) hitches a ride across the Texas plains. Arriving in town, he sets out to retrieve his Uncle Hud. There’s no sign of him, just the damage Hud inflicted the night before; broken glass outside a bar, his big Cadillac parked in front of a strange house, and a woman’s shoe in the yard. Lonnie rousts Hud (Paul Newman) with news of trouble at the ranch.

Hud’s cattle rancher father Homer (Melvyn Douglas) is worried by the unexplained death of one of their cows. He wants to call the state vet. Hud could care less, he just wants to get back into town to cavort. The vet suspects an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Hud urges his old man to sell their herd before the results come back, but the upright rancher is pained his wayward son would even consider that.

When his advances are spurned by the barbed housekeeper (Patricia Neal), Hud is so desperate for company he takes Lonnie into town. Uncle and nephew bond by participating in a saloon brawl. The impressionable youth is drawn to Hud’s dangerous charm, but Homer cautions his grandson, “You’re just going to have to make up your own mind one day about what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Paul Newman and director Martin Ritt had already worked together on three pictures when they struck a partnership to produce films together. Newman felt that his screen performances in the Tennessee Williams plays Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth had been softened by the censors, and was eager to appear in something even more provocative.

Newman and Ritt chose to adapt Horseman, Pass By, the 1961 debut novel by Larry McMurtry. It was a thematically rich, sexually explicit variation on Catcher In The Rye told through the eyes of a teenager on a cattle ranch in Texas. Hud was the antagonist, but Newman and Ritt were attracted to the idea of building the film around his morally unredeemable character.

Husband and wife screenwriters Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr. adapted the script. They made a number of changes – relocating the story from North Texas to the Panhandle – but McMurtry would later comment, “The screenwriters erred badly in following my novel too closely.”

Right from the credits – which unveil Texas in the splendor of a black and white, widescreen frame, accompanied by Spanish guitar playing a folk melody – Hud is pitch perfect. Paul Newman gives one of the iconic performances of his career, playing a derelict bastard right up there with Clint Eastwood in Play Misty For Me or Steve McQueen in Bullitt.

Larry McMurtry’s characters possess an inner depth and complexity that contrasts beautifully with their “aw shucks” appearance, and the scripted dialogue between them is so good, honest and frequently witty. I’m typically bananas for any black and white movie shot in anamorphic widescreen, but James Wong Howe’s lighting is some of the most evocative of the period. I’d highly recommend this just for the cinematography alone.

Hud was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Well deserved winners were Patricia Neal for Best Actress, Melvyn Douglas for Best Supporting Actor, and James Wong Howe for Best Cinematography, Black and White. Elmer Bernstein composed the sparse but outstanding musical score. The film was shot partly in the town of Claude, 20 miles east of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle.

Hud made the cut of The Greatest Films at the award-winning Filmsite.org.

DVD Beaver gives Hud mad props and supplies technical information for all you fans of bitrate.

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