(Der Wildeste unter Tausend [de] )
USA 1963
d: Martin Ritt
Paramount Home Entertainment (Region 2 de)
sc: Irving Ravetch, Harriet Frank Jr. (based on the novel "Horseman Pass By" by Larry McMurtry)
c: James Wong Howe (b/w, Panavision)
e: Frank Bracht
pd: Tambi Larsen, Hal Pereira
m: Elmer Bernstein
p: Martin Ritt, Irving Ravetch (Paramount Pictures, Salem-Dover Productions)
w: Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal, Brandon De Wilde, Whit Bissell, Crahan Denton, John Ashley, Val Avery, George Petrie, Curt Conway, Sheldon Allman, Pitt Herbert, Carl Low, Robert Hinkle, Don Kennedy
pr: 28 Mai 1963
aw: Academy Awards 1964 Oscar Best Actor in a Supporting Role Melvyn Douglas; Best Actress in a Leading Role Patricia Neal; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White • BAFTA Awards 1964 Best Foreign Actress Patricia Neal • Venice Film Festival 1963 OCIC Award
rt: 107:05 (+4%PAL= 112) min
dvd-rl: 04 Nov 2004
ar: 2.35:1 (16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen)
sd: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround • English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • German Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • French Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: English, German, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, Slovenian, Croatian, Hungarian, Serbian, Icelandic, Hebrew, Dutch, Bulgarian, Romanian, Turkish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Arabic
supp: --
Along with Hombre, one of Ritt's best films, less abrasive than it thinks but still a remarkably clear-eyed account of growing up in Texas to mourn the old free-ranging ways of the frontier days. Its focus is the antagonism between a sternly moralising, patriarchal ranch-owner (Douglas) and his free-drinking, free-whoring 'no account' son (Newman); the conflict between them, ambivalently observed by the two other members of the household, both emotionally involved with Newman - the ranch housekeeper (Neal) and a hero-worshipping nephew (de Wilde) - boils to a head over a government order to slaughter the ranch's entire herd as a precaution against foot-and-mouth, with Newman urging outlaw defiance and Douglas siding with the law. The film sometimes seems to be busting its britches to attain the status of Greek tragedy in delineating the disintegration of a heritage, with dialogue haunted by images of death and decay. But pretensions are kept nicely damped down by the performances (all four principals are great) and by Wong Howe's magnificent camerawork.
— TM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Paul Newman in Hud...characterized the modern western hero as disoriented and anachronistic, persisting, despite the decay of ranch life,...with a futile rebellion. Hud, one of the sixties' most important films and a top box-office success, explores movingly, in a terse Irving Ravetch/Harriet Frank, Jr. script, the dissolution of the Texas cattle empires and the collapse of cowboy traditions in the face of changing industrial and social conditions. Melvyn Douglas came out of retirement to create a memorable portrait of quiet indomitability as the old rancher, but it is Newman's Hud, drunken, wenching heir to the range; his nephew Brandon de Wilde, initially admiring but later disillusioned by his hero's corruption and cruelty; and the arrogant sexuality of Patricia Neal as the housekeeper he lusts after but cannot possess, who control the film, supported by James Wong Howe's relentlessly realistic exterior photography that bleeds the sky of character, exposing the film's characters like microbes on the sterile slide of the bleached plain.
— John Baxter, Hollywood in the Sixties
