At the core of Martin Ritt’s elegiac Hud is the generational conflict between Paul Newman’s eponymous antihero—a tortured soul not unlike James Dean’s Jim from Rebel Without a Cause—and his cold, highly principled rancher father, Homer (Melvyn Douglas). Gripped by a sense of unspoken grief since the accidental death of Hud’s brother, father and son repeatedly lock horns over Hud’s boozing, philandering, and general devil-may-care attitude.
A clash of ideologies during rapidly changing times exacerbates this friction, and as disease suddenly sweeps in and threatens to wipe out all of Homer’s cattle, the patriarch sees his old free-ranging ways on the verge of extinction. James Wong Howe’s stunning and sparse widescreen black-and-white cinematography, for which he won his second Oscar, emphasizes the vast spaces between people hopelessly unable to connect with or understand one another.
Dragged into the tensions between father and son is Hud’s once-idolizing nephew, Lonnie (Brandon de Wilde), whose wide-eyed admiration of his uncle’s rebellious spirit gives way to respect for his grandfather’s harsh yet stabilizing virtuousness. The film, adapted from Larry McMurtry’s 1961 novel Horseman, Pass By, is simultaneously a mournful lament for a passing of a way of life and a meditation on the possible ways forward.
Image/Sound
The Criterion Collection’s 4K release presents a new restoration of Martin Ritt’s film in Dolby Vision HDR, which highlights the stark beauty of James Wong Howe’s high-contrast cinematography with remarkably inky blacks and seemingly infinite shades of gray. The image is sharp and stable, bringing out the textures of faces, clothes, and landscape with great fidelity. The uncompressed mono audio keeps the dialogue clear and forward in the mix, while nicely balancing the natural elements like wind and the rustle of cattle in the background.
Extras
In the first of two interviews included on the disc, actor Sally Field, who made three films with Ritt (Norma Rae, Back Roads, and Murphy’s Romance), talks about what she loves about Hud and shares several stories of her times working with the filmmaker. In the second, cinematographer Roger Deakins focuses on the technical achievements of Howe’s work on Hud. We also get an audio-only archival clip of Ritt from a 1974 seminar, in which he talks about his approach to actors and story structure, and a 1994 episode of Inside the Actors Studio with Paul Newman. Rounding out the package is a booklet with a 1963 American Cinematographer interview with Howe and a new essay by film scholar Gabriel Miller, who touches on Ritt’s early career and the adaptation process of Larry McMurtry’s first novel.
Overall
The extras are nearly as spare as James Wong Howe’s widescreen compositions, but the top-notch A/V presentation of Martin Ritt’s Hud makes this release a must-own.
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