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Movie "Hud"
I couldn't sleep last night and came upstairs and turned on the
TV and happened into a movie that impressed me. It was a movie
by the name of "Hud", starring Paul Newman, on channel 88 which
specializes in Hollywood classics. The setting was a cattle
ranch in the west. When I turned into the channel the movie
was in progress. The owner of the ranch, an old man, was
sitting out on the range in conversation with his boy Hud (a
young man of around 30 --- Paul Newman). Hud was telling his
father he should sell all the cattle immediately, get rid of
them as quickly as possible. The father was in shock and
rebuked him only with, "You are an unprincipled young man". It
seems they had reason to believe that they had Foot and Mouth
disease in their herd and that, if it were so, the entire herd
would have to be destroyed. Hud was saying that you have to
look out for yourself in this world, that the entire world was
all lie, sham and deception anyway, and the only intelligent
thing to do was to sell the cattle immediately, while they
still could. The entire movie was about the conflict between
the old man and his boy Hud. The old man was a person of
integrity and principles and Hud was a wild, carousing woman
chaser, with unbridled appetites, and concern for no-one but
himself. Neither was able to stand the other. Before the
movie had finished Hud had attempted to rape their attractive
cook and was scheming to get his father declared legally
incompetent, due to old age, so he could get control of the
ranch.
One of the best scenes was the one where the father told Hud
the reason for his long antipathy to him. Hud thought the
reason was the part he had played in the death of his brother.
His father told him that was not the reason, that his bad
feelings toward him went back to far before that incident. Hud
wanted to know what the real source of the feelings were and
then declared "I don't give a damn", whereon the father said
"That is it! That is the cause of my feelings. You don't give
a damn. You have never given a damn. You don't care about
anyone except yourself. You have a certain power with people,
a certain wildness that they like. Women are attracted to you.
People follow you. You have the ability to gain the confidence
of people, to make them trust you. But that just makes it all
that much worse."
Another important character in the story was a young boy torn
between his sense of right and his attraction to Hud. The old
man once told him, "You have a decision you are going to have
to make". At the end of the movie the old man dies and the
young boy packs his bags and leaves the ranch to find his
future elsewhere --- leaving the ranch in the hands of Hud.
The movie ends with Hud sipping beer.
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