Hud
|
Our Price: $8.99 Availability: Usually ships in 6 to 9 days Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Hud
Movie Review: A Greek Tragedy Clothed as a Western
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a unique Western for so many reasons. It's not so much about the old West as about the end of the old West. It has very few scenes of action. It's not about train bandits or Indian killers or saloon card games. It's about values - the values that built America and the values that will tear it apart. And for that reason, I think it is the one of the five best Westerns ever filmed. (The other four are Lonely are the Brave, The Wild Bunch, The Ox Bow Incident, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)
Different people react to different lines of the film...the movie is so well written. The line I remember best is that "America changes based upon the men we value." In our American politics, all of us have seen the significance in the type of Presidents selected to lead the country.
This film is more like a play, a Greek tragedy, of the rift between father and son. The father - a cowboy of the old sort - believes in the land, believes in personal freedom, believes in the importance of reputation, and believes in himself. The son - a cowboy of the new sort - believes in nothing - or at minimum, just in looking after himself.
The total lack of morals of the son named Hud (performed brilliantly by Paul Newman) tears apart everything that the father has built on the ranch. In the end, the father prefers to die. Yes, the son has obtained control of the ranch in this way...but it seems an empty gain.
So much of the film is figurative and metaphorical. This gives the movie such richness and depth. I was amazed how compelling the story was with so little action. You might say this is a thinking man's Western. Indeed the violence of Hud is always misplaced...and somewhat distasteful. Contrast that with the typical Western or Science Fiction film which (impliedly) praises the violent hero who wipes out his enemy with a gun.
Indeed, when certain violent scenes are restrained, the film gains additional power. There is a moment where the ranchers have to kill 100 herd of cows who have contracted hoof and mouth disease. In detail, the modern film would depict the blood and gore and suffering of the animals. But that's unnecessary. The death of the animals is more meaningful by showing the shooting, then the burial of these animals.
"Hud", the film, is simply superb. I recommend it for all adults and perhaps for children 13 and over who have the attention span to give the film all it deserves.
Movie Review: A great western and a tale for our times
Summary: 5 Stars
In the pivotal scene in Hud, Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas) confronts his nihilistic son Hud (Paul Newman) while his nephew looks on. In one of the great scenes of all time, Homer tells his son: "Oh, you got all that charm goin' for you, and it makes the youngsters want to be like you. That's the shame of it. Because you don't value nothin.' You don't respect nothin.' You keep no check on your appetites at all. You live just for yourself and that makes you not fit to live with."
Later, he addresses his newphew Lon who chides the man for his harsh treatment of Hud and says "Lonnie, little by little the face of the country changes because of the men we admire. You're just gonna have to make up your mind one day, about what's right and what's wrong."
This is the theme of Hud -- a youngster learning manhood from his two models -- his hedonistic, unprincipled uncle and his conservative, righteous grandfather who values integrity.
And like Peckinpah's magnificent "Wild Bunch" it is about the dying of the West. The urban, progressive Hud is fighting against the rural ways of his father. Hud wants to dig for oil but Homer won't punch holes in his sacred land. Hud wants to sell sick cows to his neighbors to avoid a government quarantine. Homer wants to follow the law.
And that is what fascinates me about this film. People who watch this film identify more with Hud. He's the lovable rascal. Some viewers genuinely like him and wonder why Lon chooses the path of his grandfather. The grandfather seems rigid, self-righteous and even quietly harsh. Yet it is the hard way which is the right way in this film. Hud has destroyed all those around him - his brother, the housekeeper and ultimately the grandfather. It is a good lesson that wrong things sometimes come in pretty packages. It is a great lesson for today: who do we admire? Who are our heroes? Do they really deserve our affection and how does that pervert all of us.
Ritt is magnificent. He juxtaposes Newman's loud, kinetic Hud with the quiet and slow Homer. James Wong Howes cinemetagraphy captures the starkness of Texas but fills it with a quiet beauty. The acting is subtle and nuanced and O'Neil and Douglas deserved Oscars for their timeless performances. Newman, who has trouble keeping a Texas accent is overrated in this film but it hardly matters. The film is a masterpiece but a quiet masterpiece.
Movie Review: "It don't take long to kill things; not like it does to grow."
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie opens with scenes of endless barren Texas flatland, and a dusty small town caught in the middle of it like a spot on a napkin. Open spaces characterize the film, which takes place on a ranch surrounded by lonesome roads. It feels like open space; a breath of fresh air from the wishy-washy, politically correct, happy-ending Hollywood films of today.
Based on Larry McMurtry's novel "Horseman, Pass By," "Hud" is a gruff, manly meditation on life and death, loneliness, and moving on. An old cattle rancher's hopes are shot to death, and his few relatives are left to carry on his legacy.
Hud is an arrogant, untamed cowboy who has more trouble to him than he reveals. His father (the old wise rancher known as Granddad) resents his freewheeling irresponsibility and misses the older brother that Hud killed by accident. Lonnie is the young optimistic grandson (nephew to Hud) who takes strongly to Hud's wild ways yet also admires his solid reliable grandfather. Halmea is the housekeeper, a temptress to both Hud and Lonnie who escapes them both in the end. Granddad's cows are diseased and he is unsure of what the future of his ranch will be. He is old and may not see much more of it. He's a wise man who's seen a lot of life, Hud's in his middle years and being forced to come to terms with it, and Lonnie is young, yearning to pass into manhood.
"Hud" possesses the quiet understatement of the desolate landscape that surrounds it. The characters are honest (except Hud) people and live life at their own pace. It is a curiously detached life, in the middle of nowhere, one in which the characters fight a constant battle to fend off loneliness. It is an unpretentiously philosophical movie. Each character ponders life and death, and because of several disastrous family deaths before the movie starts, it haunts each of them like a ghost over the gaping desert. "No one gets out of life alive," reflects Hud as he and Lonnie are on their way into town for some wild carousing. The theme of mortality floats through the film, as does the theme of moving on. The ending is not happy; it's matter-of-fact and understated.
That's "Hud:" life. Rugged, rough, and quietly contemplative life.
Movie Review: You're a sociopath, Hud
Summary: 5 Stars
"Hud" is one of Newman's greatest movies but, interestingly, I find his father, the old man, more compelling. Hud, as his old father notes, has his share of charm and even guts but he has no soul. He doesn't care. He doesn't care about people and lives only for himself. He uses others, especially women, but ultimately he is his own worst enemy and his reward is a emptiness.
Initially, Lonnie, his 17 y.o. nephew admires him and wants to be Hud's kind of man. Gradually, perhaps inevitably, the nephew learns all too much about Hud both from his grandfather and Hud's own selfish and reckless behavior. A cow dies. Hud wants to leave the carcass to the buzzards but his father, although he has much to lose, insists on a veterinary examination. The veterinarian suspects hoof-and-mouth, a disease that requires the slaughtering of entire herds. Hud wants to sell off the herd before the veterinarian returns with his report. His father refuses and Hud sees a lawyer to have his father declared incompetent...with Hud as administrator of the estate.
Too late for Hud, the veterinariam returns with a report postive for hoof-and-mouth. We grieve for the old man having to kill his cattle and livelihood in a bulldozer-excavated pit. Hud is disgusted that he couldn't offload the cattle before this happens.
Hud, as usual, gets blind drunk. Then tries to rape the housekeeper. Lonnie has to protect her from his drunken uncle. By this time Lonnie's admiration for his self-centered uncle hits rock bottom. The old man, thrown from a horse, dies of pure discouragement. Lonnie leaves the ranch and doesn't look back. We are left with Hud in an empty house and an empty ranch having a beer and shrugging off his nephew as if it doesn't matter. Of course, nothing ever really matters to Hud, especially not himself.
There are multiple levels that this film can be viewed. We can view Hud as the product of an unloving father but, more correctly I think, Hud is a self-made man, worthy of contempt.
Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico
Movie Review: One of the greatest westerns ever made
Summary: 5 Stars
Along with "The Ox-Bow Incident" and "Once Upon A Time In the West", this is one of the greatest westerns ever made. It is a western allegory, to be certain, with Paul Newman's antihero acting as foil to his high morality father and betwixt and between nephew, who admires both but doesn't know which way to go.
In the end, the antihero outlasts his old man, gets his ranch, sells it off for the oil that bubbles beneath the surface, and goes on his merry way, with no regard for anyone lese. The good guy is dead, the bad guy wins, and the viewer is left with an emptiness because the morality tale is not reconciled properly. It is this final comment -- evil wins -- that makes this one of the greatest films of its type.
Along with "Cool Hand Luke", this role has been the plum of Paul Newman's still ongoing career. Newman scored as a another bad boy against his real-life wife in another flick but never played the bad boy as well as in this movie. Melvyn Douglas, whose screen presence was never less than magnificent, was outstanding as his father and the keeper of all goodwill.
The conflict between titans on opposite sides of the morality spectrum is what sustains the tension throughout this epic and still modern film. Had either of the characters been less real, less of a leonine figure, this movie would easily have wallowed in mediocrity.
As it is, "Hud" is a singular figure in movie history -- the modern cowboy that goes bad, defeats the moralist, and gets his reward in the end. What makes it such a tresurable experience is its grounding in reality, not fantasy. In the fantasy world of Hollywood, the good guy in the white hat usually wins.
This time, the bad guy wore a white hat, drank too much, cheated with married women, tried to rape the cook and forced her to leave, undercut his dad at every turn, aged him beyond his years, portrayed a miserable role model for a younger relative, and got everything. And the repellent portrayal is just as fascinating on screen as it would be in real life.