Martin Ritt’s 1963 modern western joins the Criterion Collection
Paul Newman plays the title role in Hud, and while his role is at the center of the work — based on a novel by Larry McMurtry — the film allows the viewer to see how his closest family and friends react to his self-obsessed, selfish nature. Hud lives and works on a cattle ranch in the Texas panhandle owned by his elderly father, played by Melvyn Douglas (Ninotchka), along with Hud’s seventeen-year-old nephew Lonnie (Brandon de Wilde, Shane). Lonnie is a naive teen eager to learn from his uncle, until he learns too much about the man. Housekeeper Alma (Patricia Neal) spars with Hud as he tries and fails to seduce her.
To be honest, the Sally Field interview included on the recently released Criterion Collection Blu-ray of Hud was my main draw to finally check out the classic; I wasn’t sure I was up for yet another film about a toxic man. Martin Ritt’s film and the performances therein, along with the adapted screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., surprised me with its depth and stark beauty. The award-winning cinematography by James Wong Howe (The Thin Man, Bell, Book & Candle) is stunning, masterfully capturing the arid landscape of the Panhandle. I was completely won over by this 60-year-old modern western, with statements like, “Little by little, the look of the country changes because of the men we admire,” which hits just as hard in 2026.
Newman’s Hud Bannon is lonesome, hurt, conniving and abusive, and we see the closest people in his life decide they don’t have to take it. Douglas plays Granddad as a King Lear type figure while he remains the moral compass for the work. The central tragedy is the foot and mouth disease which ravages his herd, a plague and metaphor for the vanishing way of life for a small family ranch. The large, expertly choreographed tractors that appear late in the film symbolize the technology endemic to the company farms/ranches which will take over the landscape. If the film could be distilled into a moment (impossible!), it might be the thoughtfully framed scene of the tractors driving past the static figures of the Bannons.
Newman is gruff and raw in his performance, while Neal and de Wilde are more understated in their roles. Neal plays Alma with a sort of world-weary feel. As a divorced woman, she seems easy prey to Hud, who flirts and makes suggestive comments. Hud shows the lack of security she comes to find in her workplace and her refusal to put up with it. De Wilde is the biggest surprise, given the only other role I’d seen him in was as the young blonde child in Shane. We see his desire to model himself on Hud as a role model, following his uncle into town and tagging along during his carousing. As he spends more time around his uncle, he realizes he wants to be a different sort of man.
Hud is the sort of film they don’t make anymore, one that challenges the viewer and doesn’t offer easy answers. Is it a movie I’ll want to revisit often? No (primarily due to a scene of attempted sexual assault). However, it’s easy to see why Ritt’s film is celebrated and considered a classic; one might even say, a masterpiece.
Special features on the Criterion Collection Blu-ray include:
- Actress Sally Field chats with author Isaac Butler about her own experience working with director Ritt (Norma Rae, Murphy’s Romance) and her thoughts on Hud. She speaks of the 1963 film as a depiction of “how hard it is to be a human being,” as well as her appreciation for the movement used in Neal’s performance and the still moments in Newman’s performance (“A hard thing to play is quiet,” she tells Butler.) They discuss Ritt as a working-class director and his impact on filmmaking.
- Cinematographer Roger Deakins speaks about the impact of James Wong Howe’s work, specifically in Hud. Howe preferred to shoot in black and white, and this movie was shot on location in Texas over 4 weeks. Deakins talks about Howe’s depth of focus and the decision to shoot night for night in the 1963 film.
- Excerpts from a seminar given at the American Film Institute by Ritt in 1974. The audio quality is pretty cruddy, but it’s still nifty that this was found.
- a 1994 episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio with Paul Newman.
