Hud

In Martin Ritt’s baroque adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s debut novel Horseman, Pass By, Paul Newman plays Hud Bannon: a sneering, womanizing, beer-chugging cattleman who is utterly impossible to take your eyes off of. Hud makes a magnetic counterexample to his principled father Homer (Melvyn Douglas) as they disagree over how to handle an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. This generational struggle is observed by Hud’s teen nephew Lonnie (Brandon De Wilde) and the family housekeeper Alma (Patricia Neal), whose lonesome backstories contribute to the dusty, melancholic atmosphere conjured by cameraman James Wong Howe and Ritt, still underrated among proto-New Hollywood auteurs.