Hud

This movie from Netflix we received Hud. The 1963 movie describes itself as a movie about a heel. Said heel is played by Paul Newman and it might well be one of his best roles.

The movie centers on a cattle ranch in Texas in the nineteen fifties. Homer Bannon is the patriarch of the ranch living with his 34 year old son Hud and his grandson Lonnie. Lonnie's father Norman, died when the boy was young, a car accident that Hud in his carelessness was responsible for.

The movie opens with Lonnie going into town very early one morning. Sent in by his Granddad to find Hud he finds him at the home of a married woman whose husband is away. Hud played with a winning smile and devil may care attitude by Newman is a wild child. He is self centered, hard drinking and in a word my father might have used " shiftless" He wants as much happiness as he can get in the world for the least amount of work and responsibility.

Homer Bannon has a dislike of his son that he tries to contain. Everything Hud does grates on his father. Patricia Neal in an Oscar Winning role plays the family's live in maid and housekeeper. An attractive, saucy divorcee Neal is a mother figure for Lon and an object of lust for Hud.

The main plot point of the movie is the farm dealing with a bout of foot and mouth disease in it's cattle herd. If true the ranch will be devastated as all the cattle will have to be destroyed.

This movie is not so much about what happens as the characters it happens to. Newman's Hud is like someone we all have known in our life. Handsome or Beautiful, able to skate thru life on charm and and a smile, but a shell of a person inside. Melyvn Douglass won his first of two Best Supporting Actor Oscar's for his role as the patriarch Homer Bannon.

When Homer tells Hud that he is not " a principled man" it is the most cutting remark he can make. For Hud however it goes down his back, he considers all these old feelings of duty and responsibility as a sucker's game and is actually manipulating an attempt to take the ranch from his father.

Newman is brilliant and it seems surprising no Oscar went his way, his role is much more complicated than it appears, while Neal and Douglass shine.

A scene in the movie where Lon takes his Grampa into town for dinner and a movie is a sweet moment in a somewhat mean movie. As the folks in the movie theatre sing along with the bouncing dot to My Darling Clementine Lon looks over at his Grandad with Love as the old man sings with gusto. Later as they eat at the diner in town Lon is preparing the a giant cheeseburger, and when Homer chuckles and asks him if he can get his mouth around that for me personally I missed my Dad.

It is a mystery how such a good man can raise such as poor excuse for a man as Hud. It is a question many parents have asked. Sometimes being a good example is clearly not enough.

Shot in black and white in a stunningly beautiful way this movie is a joy to watch even were the plot terrible. The cinematography is perfect. The conclusion of the movie is ambivalent and can leave you feeling so as well. Hud is not redeemable and as he closes the door at the end of the movie any hope you had for some kind of epiphany are dashed. The movie works more when you think about the ending and understand why to redeem Hud would falsify what happens in the whole movie.

A great movie. Great performances.