| When looking at classic Hollywood cinema it’s easy to say, "They don’t make ’em like that anymore." Everything from the production value to the stylized dialogue is a product of the time. So specific are these elements that the only modern filmmaker to successfully capture and contemporize a classic genre film in true style is Todd Haynes with his ode to ’50s melodrama, Far From Heaven.
While classic noir and screwball comedy are rooted in a particular time and place, director Martin Ritt’s Hud (1963), a modern reworking of the western genre, feels as contemporary as though it had been made last year.
Captured in stark widescreen black and white by legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe, Hud is a brutal neo-western take on Larry McMurtry’s novel of southern despair. Probably best remembered for the incendiary performance by a young Paul Newman, every aspect of this film comes together as a near flawless work of art. Newman’s Hud is a shameless womanizing good-time boy who shares the workload on the family farm with his old-fashioned father (Melvyn Douglas) and his naive nephew (Brandon de Wilde). As the three men try to come to terms with each other (and Hud’s long dead brother) they are also forced to deal with the changing cultural and economic landscape of mid-20th century Texas.
Although it was made in the ’60s, the film easily captures the epic scope of classic John Ford westerns. Ritt’s success comes from dealing with the darkly intimate relationships of the characters against the massive expanse of Texas. Each of the men in the story are as isolated as the land they live on. The bleak melancholy of the film is a refreshingly sober look at the increasing quest for convenience in the face of tradition.
Tensions mount between Hud and his father as their herd of cattle is diagnosed with hoof-and-mouth disease. Forced with the task of killing off the infected cattle, both Ritt and Douglas opt for understatement in a scene where one would expect a sweeping music swell and torrent of blood. Instead, as the corralled animals are systematically executed, the scene plays out with an understated symbolic melancholy that is representative of the rest of the film.
Like a great work of literature, Hud is loaded with symbolism and takes its time reveling in subplots. However, the film is such a cohesive work that nothing feels out of place. The performances of all the leads are pitch perfect, but it’s Newman who breathes an internalized rage into the character of Hud – which transplants the iconic lone western drifter into a grim Texas farmhouse – that drives the film home.
What is so surprising about Hud is how timeless the storytelling proves to be. Ritt borrows from past western classics and yet seems to imagine the best films of the ’70s in an almost precognitive manner. The characters are living in a very specific time and place, yet the themes are universal. With his thoughtful and firmly planted camera, Ritt shows that they don’t make ’em like this anymore, but proves that they really should. |
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