1963. Starring Paul Newman, Patricia Neal. Directed by Martin Ritt.

There’s no other actor I’d rather be than Paul Newman. Not only handsome and cool, but humble and talented enough to play an anti-hero like Hud. “An unprincipled man,” as his father (Melvyn Douglas) describes him, Hud spends his days resentfully working the family ranch and his nights drinking and romancing married women. Hud lives under a shadow, responsible for his older brother’s death and never living up to his father’s expectations. His one fan is his brother’s son, Lonnie (Brandon de Wilde), who at 17 is starting to feel his oats. They share a desire for the ranch’s cook, played with soap-and-water sexuality by Patricia Neal, who won a Best Actress Oscar for her role.

The family tolerates each other, until an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among the stock presents them with a moral quandary. Do you sell the cattle before the worst is confirmed, getting something out of the ranch’s legacy, but inflicting the disaster on your neighbors, or do you do the right thing, at your own expense? Well, Hud expects to inherit the ranch, and considers moral quandaries as seriously as he does wedding vows. And as he reminds everyone, he’s not a patient man.

Newman makes the entirely despicable Hud a halfway likeable cad. But it’s only Hud’s charm and near constant drunkenness that keeps a lid on the torment he contains. He’s quick to pick a fight, break up a marriage, even assault Neal after their good-natured flirting takes a dark turn. He battles constantly with his disapproving father, blaming him for rolling over and giving up the ranch, instead of taking the easy but dishonest way out. He has failed in becoming a man, in the eyes of his father, and he begins straying even farther from the path he was expected to follow.

The beautiful black-and-white of Hud is the product of James Wong Howe, cinematographer for dozens of films from the 1920s through the 1970s, and the beautiful bleak landscape is courtesy of south and west Texas. The script, based on a novel by Larry McMurtry, is as sparse and brittle as that scrub country. “It’s a lonely ol’ night, isn’t it?” asks Lonnie as he tags along along one of Hud’s sprees.

“Ain’t they all,” is the sad response.

Ultimately, Lonnie faces the choice whether to become the man that Hud has turned into, all talk and bluster, irresponsible and full of himself, or to become a man like his grandfather, making hard choices and holding back the pain of turning over the world to people who, more and more, are like his wayward son. Paul Newman played many a more likeable character, but even when playing a ne’er-do-well like Hud, he does everything right.