Paul Newman in Hud isthe modern Western hero, an anachronism on the range. Riding in on hishandsome mount-an aggressive, garish Cadillac that in itself justifiesthe CinemaScope frame-he scandalizes the self-righteous simply by "notgiving a damn" or by flaunting what he does care about in their prudishfaces. The fact is, there's nothing else for a cowboy to do in the faceof collapsing cattle empires and changing social conditions. Whilealmost the entire cast-including Melvyn Douglas as the indomitable,moralizing patriarch and Patricia Neal as the smoldering but forbiddinghousekeeper-and crew of Hud were nominated for Oscars, it is a finalcommentary that Douglas got his, while Newman's swaggering appetiteswere once again punished with none. James Wong Howe's cinematography hasbeen described as "relentlessly realistic...bleed(ing) the sky ofcharacter, exposing the film's characters like microbes on the sterileslide of the bleached plain" (John Baxter, Hollywood in the Sixties).(Howe, incidentally, got his, too, and deservedly.)