Hud Bannon is a hell-raising cowboy with a pink cadillac who lives on a lonely farm with his old father and his teenage nephew. There is a glaring mismatch between Hud's playboy inclinations and the dour, empty life of the farm. A traumatic event brings these family tensions to a head.
The broad flat expanses of the Texas cow country are captured evocatively in Panavision. This is a world of open cattle range, small sleepy towns, screen doors, stetsons and tooled-leather boots. The land is arid and unforgiving, and the life here is hard. Farmers pass their evenings sitting on plain wooden porches, listening to the whipoorwills, and the youngsters rent the same old pulp novels at the general store. Elmer Bernstein's elegantly simple score underlines the starkness of this existence. Country music bleeds from juke boxes and transistor radios, as bland and omnipresent as the dust, creeping into every crevice of the film.
Hud is a fine-looking man with undeniable charm, but he is also a cruel, selfish stud. He is now 34 years old, and his years of drinking, fighting and womanising are beginning to take on the aspect of a wasted life. The opening moments of the film show young Lonnie (Brandon de Wilde) scouring the town streets in the early morning light, searching for his Uncle Hud. We get to know Hud by the trail of destruction he has left in his wake. A bar owner, sweeping up broken glass, tells Lonnie "I had Hud in here is what I had." A woman's high-heel shoe, abandoned on the garden path, tells Lonnie exactly where his uncle spent the night.
Running around with married women is Hud's style. It is an affront to this close-knit conservative community, and an emotional and biological dead-end.
"I always say, the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner" pronounces Hud, who bends every rule to suit his own inclination. He avoids the anger of a cuckolded husband by shifting the blame to the innocent Lonnie, and when a serious problem arises with the family herd, Hud wants to sell the cattle quickly, aiming to preserve his own wealth and pass the problem on to others. His father Homer (Mervyn Douglas) is a man of unimpeachable honesty, and we see a glance pass between him and Hud which tells us everything. Father and son know each other's true worth.
It surprises Hud that Homer should seek his opinion on the cattle problem. For a long time now, the old man has been running the farm without Hud taking any responsibility. "He didn't ask me about anything in fifteen years." Gradually, we begin to learn about a family tragedy which has irrevocably alienated the two men.
The pig-chasing game at the rodeo is an ironic comment on skirt-chasing, and of course Hud wins the prize. He has the confident swagger and the jaunty-hipped stance of a man who knows he is pleasing to women. His sexual banter with Alma runs through the film. Alma admires Hud sexually, but his interest in her is limited to mere conquest. In pursuing her he flouts the rules of taste and decency (she is an employee, almost family, and he is brutal towards her). This is prefigured when he arrogantly parks his cadillac on her flower bed.
Alma keeps house for the Bannons. She enjoys the masculine atmosphere and takes the coarse innuendo with good-natured amusement. Patricia Neame plays Alma with a loose-limbed, barefoot sexiness which ultimately brings her trouble. She has flirtatious fun with Lonnie and confesses to being aroused sexually by Hud's torso. When Homer tells Lonnie that women like to be around dangerous men, Alma leans into shot. However, Alma the divorcee has no illusions about Hud - "I done my time with one cold-blooded bastard," she says. "I'm not looking for another."
The film is packed with wonderful images. As Lonnie crosses the dusty street, his upper body is obscured by the rodeo banner, suggesting that his individuality is being compromised by the hard round of rural life, the unending interplay of sun and dirt. The slanting tree with its ominous burden of buzzards frames the pick-up truck, presaging trouble. Homer and the vet, discussing cattle in the foreground, bracket the distant Hud. He is diminished and marginalised by these serious cattlemen. Gates close on the farm, with quarantine signs attached, showing more eloquently than any words how Homer's world is narrowing and darkening. A bulldozer traverses the screen from left to right, effecting a 'wipe', leaving the three Bannons alone against the dirt, in an emblem of the devastation the government has visited upon them. As they gaze into the pit, the bulldozer squats above them in triumph. Hud is 'enclosed' by the angle of his cadillac's door, just as his life is hemmed in by his shallow hedonism. At the depot Alma's body is framed by Hud's hat and chest, hinting at his oppressive sexuality. The two of them are caught fleetingly in the rectangle of the bus door, Alma symbolically shown as 'the one that got away'.
The slick, sardonic script is first class, and the film is bursting with symbolic resonances. Homer carries a picture of his long-dead boy in his wallet, but none of Hud, his living son. The cattle are trapped in a timber chute, symbolising the claustrophobic existence of the humans. The sexual violence is played out in panting silence - these people have nothing to say to each other. Homer's longhorns were once the source of everything good - food, clothing, tools. Now they are harbingers of pestilence. At the heart of the farm is the water butt, and Lonnie and Hud bond here after their night of carousal. Later, when Lonnie rejects Hud, the butt stands between them.
Lonnie knows he will ultimately have to choose between right and wrong. In the windswept silence of the farm, emblem of the family's demise, he makes his choice.
The broad flat expanses of the Texas cow country are captured evocatively in Panavision. This is a world of open cattle range, small sleepy towns, screen doors, stetsons and tooled-leather boots. The land is arid and unforgiving, and the life here is hard. Farmers pass their evenings sitting on plain wooden porches, listening to the whipoorwills, and the youngsters rent the same old pulp novels at the general store. Elmer Bernstein's elegantly simple score underlines the starkness of this existence. Country music bleeds from juke boxes and transistor radios, as bland and omnipresent as the dust, creeping into every crevice of the film.
Hud is a fine-looking man with undeniable charm, but he is also a cruel, selfish stud. He is now 34 years old, and his years of drinking, fighting and womanising are beginning to take on the aspect of a wasted life. The opening moments of the film show young Lonnie (Brandon de Wilde) scouring the town streets in the early morning light, searching for his Uncle Hud. We get to know Hud by the trail of destruction he has left in his wake. A bar owner, sweeping up broken glass, tells Lonnie "I had Hud in here is what I had." A woman's high-heel shoe, abandoned on the garden path, tells Lonnie exactly where his uncle spent the night.
Running around with married women is Hud's style. It is an affront to this close-knit conservative community, and an emotional and biological dead-end.
"I always say, the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner" pronounces Hud, who bends every rule to suit his own inclination. He avoids the anger of a cuckolded husband by shifting the blame to the innocent Lonnie, and when a serious problem arises with the family herd, Hud wants to sell the cattle quickly, aiming to preserve his own wealth and pass the problem on to others. His father Homer (Mervyn Douglas) is a man of unimpeachable honesty, and we see a glance pass between him and Hud which tells us everything. Father and son know each other's true worth.
It surprises Hud that Homer should seek his opinion on the cattle problem. For a long time now, the old man has been running the farm without Hud taking any responsibility. "He didn't ask me about anything in fifteen years." Gradually, we begin to learn about a family tragedy which has irrevocably alienated the two men.
The pig-chasing game at the rodeo is an ironic comment on skirt-chasing, and of course Hud wins the prize. He has the confident swagger and the jaunty-hipped stance of a man who knows he is pleasing to women. His sexual banter with Alma runs through the film. Alma admires Hud sexually, but his interest in her is limited to mere conquest. In pursuing her he flouts the rules of taste and decency (she is an employee, almost family, and he is brutal towards her). This is prefigured when he arrogantly parks his cadillac on her flower bed.
Alma keeps house for the Bannons. She enjoys the masculine atmosphere and takes the coarse innuendo with good-natured amusement. Patricia Neame plays Alma with a loose-limbed, barefoot sexiness which ultimately brings her trouble. She has flirtatious fun with Lonnie and confesses to being aroused sexually by Hud's torso. When Homer tells Lonnie that women like to be around dangerous men, Alma leans into shot. However, Alma the divorcee has no illusions about Hud - "I done my time with one cold-blooded bastard," she says. "I'm not looking for another."
The film is packed with wonderful images. As Lonnie crosses the dusty street, his upper body is obscured by the rodeo banner, suggesting that his individuality is being compromised by the hard round of rural life, the unending interplay of sun and dirt. The slanting tree with its ominous burden of buzzards frames the pick-up truck, presaging trouble. Homer and the vet, discussing cattle in the foreground, bracket the distant Hud. He is diminished and marginalised by these serious cattlemen. Gates close on the farm, with quarantine signs attached, showing more eloquently than any words how Homer's world is narrowing and darkening. A bulldozer traverses the screen from left to right, effecting a 'wipe', leaving the three Bannons alone against the dirt, in an emblem of the devastation the government has visited upon them. As they gaze into the pit, the bulldozer squats above them in triumph. Hud is 'enclosed' by the angle of his cadillac's door, just as his life is hemmed in by his shallow hedonism. At the depot Alma's body is framed by Hud's hat and chest, hinting at his oppressive sexuality. The two of them are caught fleetingly in the rectangle of the bus door, Alma symbolically shown as 'the one that got away'.
The slick, sardonic script is first class, and the film is bursting with symbolic resonances. Homer carries a picture of his long-dead boy in his wallet, but none of Hud, his living son. The cattle are trapped in a timber chute, symbolising the claustrophobic existence of the humans. The sexual violence is played out in panting silence - these people have nothing to say to each other. Homer's longhorns were once the source of everything good - food, clothing, tools. Now they are harbingers of pestilence. At the heart of the farm is the water butt, and Lonnie and Hud bond here after their night of carousal. Later, when Lonnie rejects Hud, the butt stands between them.
Lonnie knows he will ultimately have to choose between right and wrong. In the windswept silence of the farm, emblem of the family's demise, he makes his choice.