Hud (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Sep 24, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Martin RittRelease Date(s)
1963 (July 30, 2025)Studio(s)
Salem-Dover Productions/Paramount Pictures (Imprint Films/Via Vision Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: A
- Video Grade: C+
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region-Free Australian Blu-ray import.]
As a director Martin Ritt was wildly uneven, but when he was matched with the right material, often political in content, he was often outstanding: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965), Norma Rae (1979) are terrific, though his masterpiece may be The Molly Maguires (1970). Hud (1963) is another contender, a modern Western drama adapted with some changes from Larry McMurtry’s 1961 novel, Horsemen, Pass By. Ahead of its time and stretching the boundaries of the Production Code, the film is much like Peter Bogdanovich’s later The Last Picture Show (1971), with a similar setting and comparable characters.
Hud is a nearly perfect film, with its adult, character-driven screenplay (by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.), four outstanding performances, superb cinematography by James Wong Howe, and a lovely, haunting score by Elmer Bernstein. Unfortunately, Imprint’s Blu-ray is derived from a bafflingly poor video transfer provided to them by Paramount. More on this below.
Ritt, the screenwriters, and star Paul Newman changed the novel’s focus toward Newman’s title character, much like Bogdanovich’s sequel to The Last Picture Show shifted the focus from Timothy Bottoms’s Sonny to Jeff Bridges’s Duane for Texasville. In Hud, Newman’s Hud is the self-absorbed, hedonistic son of cattle rancher Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas), a “lion” like Sam (Ben Johnson) in The Last Picture Show, who loathes Hud, instead doting his affection on Lonnie (Brandon deWilde), the 20-year-old son of Hud’s deceased older brother. Both Hud and Lonnie are attracted to the Bannon’s earthy, worldly housekeeper, Alma (Patricia Neal), who lives in a little house next-door on the sprawling ranch. When not working, Hud spends most of his time having not-so-clandestine sex romps with all the married women around town. (One is played by ‘50s genre siren Yvette Vickers.)
After buying cattle on the cheap from Mexico, one bull dies mysteriously, prompting an investigation by a state vet (Whit Bissell) who suspects foot-and-mouth disease, meaning all of Homer’s cattle may have to be shot and buried, destroying Homer’s entire life’s work. Amid this tension, the normally strained relationship between Hud and Lonnie becomes close after they get into a brawl with locals at a local bar, Hud using their fleeting closeness hoping Lonnie will side with Hud’s scheme to take the ranch away from Homer, regardless of the verdict on the cattle’s health. Later, in a drunken rage, Hud tries to rape Alma...
While researching information about the video transfer, I was amused to stumble upon a review where writer Dr. Svet Atanasov was nonplussed by an Illeana Douglas interview about her actor-grandfather that’s included as an extra feature. He “thought that some of [her] comments about the themes and messages of Hud were pretty strange, because it is definitely not a political film, as Douglas implies.”
Au contraire. The single most important line of dialogue in the entire picture is Homer’s line, “The shape of the country changes depending on the men we believe in.” Homer admonishes Hud because, like a certain orange-faced world leader, he’s utterly self-absorbed, with absolutely no capacity for empathy, with zero regard for anyone but himself. He’s concerned only with his immediate gratification, with a steady supply of cash to feeds those needs; how he gets it, and who might suffer in the process is no concern of his. When that first bull becomes ill, Hud pushes for a quick sale of the entire stock before it spreads—let it become someone else’s problem; better to cash in now, no matter that selling the infected beef could cause a nationwide calamity. Honest Homer refuses, condemning Hud as “an unprincipled man.”
Hud’s self-absorbedness then, by extension, contrasts Homer’s principled capitalism—an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Hud can’t understand why Homer refuses to allow oil companies to come onto the ranch to drill for far greater riches than Homer’s old-school cattle ranch could ever provide. And on an on. Politics play a huge part in many of the films of blacklisted Ritt and liberal Newman. While politics in Hud are secondary to the relationships among the four main characters, boy howdy they’re there.
Somewhat to their disappointment, while Hud was a critical and commercial success, the antihero Hud was seen by many as more hero than anti-. Anyone playing attention would recognize that beyond his superficial charm (some of the time) and good looks, Hud is a complete heel with no real redeeming qualities—he’s loathsome. What does it mean that so many misread the character? Did Hud, in one sense, anticipate the “Me” generation of baby boomers, the culture of narcissism that emerged a decade later?
All four performances are exemplary. You can catch Newman acting but it’s still one of his several signature roles. Brandon deWilde, like Timothy Bottoms of the later Last Picture Show, was never better in the best role of his adult career. But the truly outstanding work is by Neal and Douglas, she completely convincing as a fully-dimensional working-class woman who’s worked hard all her life with little to show for it, who can dish out as much as she has to take from unreliable men trying to charm or force themselves into her bed. (Neal’s counterpart in The Last Picture Show is Eileen Brennan’s character, which is all too clearly consciously or unconsciously modeled after Neal’s.) This was probably Douglas’s second-best-ever film performance after I Never Sang for My Father. This foursome interacts with one another and, particularly, their environment with such apparent effortlessness that they truly feel fully immersed in it.
The film is greatly aided by James Wong Howe’s cinematography, among the finest work in black-and-white ‘scope (2.35:1 Panavision) which makes full use of the frame, and Elmer Bernstein’s spare but highly effective score, mostly limited to a single guitar.
Alas, Imprint’s video transfer is major disappointment. The blacks and contrast and just about everything look fine, yet the image is unpardonably soft. I kept adjusting the focus on my 4K projector to no avail, and other reviews confirmed I wasn’t imagining things. Technically high-definition, I would say the image resembles something a notch or two above the level of a 16:9 enhanced DVD of a black-and-white ‘scope film, so it’s watchable, but just barely. It should be razor-sharp; some have suggested Paramount provided an older (maybe 25-years older) transfer, but it doesn’t really resemble the earliest 1080i/p transfers, at least to my eyes. Instead, it almost looks like whomever did the transfer simply didn’t fine-tune the focus properly.
Better are the LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes. I went with the latter, which is so well done, selectively and subtly channeling sound effects into the surround speakers that several times I found myself pausing the film to try and gauge whether crickets and other ambient sounds were coming from the film or the reality around me. Optional English subtitles are provided on this Region-Free disc.
Extra features are limited to a 35-minute interview with Illeana Douglas (Melvyn’s granddaughter) and an audio commentary track by writers C. Courtney Joyner and Julie Kirgo.
For such an acclaimed film, Hud appears to be available on Blu-ray only in Germany and via this Australian release. Perhaps labels in other countries rejected Paramount’s video transfer, but whatever the reason, Hud deserves way better. It’s such a great film it really demands one.
- Stuart Galbraith IV