Fifty years ago, a mysterious stranger, wearing fringed buckskin and riding a tall horse, rode into their valley in the shadow of Wyoming's Grand Tetons. His name was Shane, and when director George Stevens put novelist Jack Schaefer's mythic creation on celluloid, filmdom's cowboys had a new champion.
A half-century later, "Shane" is still recognized not only as one of the best Westerns but also one of the best films ever made.
Ten years later, Martin Ritt delivered "Hud," another Western, albeit modern, which celebrates its 40th anniversary. The film features 20th-century cowboys and explores the dark side of a man's character. Based on Larry McMurtry's Horseman, Pass By, "Hud" also keeps a place among the finest stories ever put to film.
As the author of an essay on the two films notes in a critical edition of "Shane," they share an important theme. Two boys, one a child and the other a late teenager, watch the grown men around them and learn about manhood. This motif may be the most important in both films.
u2018Shane'
"Shane" is a brilliant and beautiful piece of old-fashioned, simple story telling. Of course, it is the tale of an heroic man who sides with the little guy, a farmer who is also determined, courageous and virile. Unfortunately, he is also outnumbered, and outmatched, by an older, perhaps even wiser antagonist of equal mettle.
As well, "Shane" is an allegory about the closing days of the wild frontier West, when settlers, yeoman farmers (sodbusters) and the civilization they toted along ended the days of the open range and gunfighters who defended it.
Most importantly, it features young Joey, the entranced eyes through which we see Shane. Joey is learning right from wrong and what it means to be a man.
A Southerner and gunfighter with a secret past, Shane arrives in the valley looking for work. He lands a job helping Joe Starrett and his wife, Marian, work their small piece of the frontier. He quickly befriends little Joey. However small the Starrett's property, a cattle rancher named Ryker wants it. Starrett and the other homesteaders, whom Ryker considers squatters, take too much water from his range.
Therein lies the conflict. But Shane has put away his gun. Symbolically, he changes clothes, adopting the attire and presumably the life of the farmer.
Ryker tries various methods to move the homesteaders off their land; or, as Ryker views it, his land. An unsophisticated viewer may believe, wrongly, that the villains are stereotypical predatory outlaws who target the defenseless. Not so. They are complex characters with whom you sympathize if you listen carefully to Ryker.
The opportunity arises when Shane and the Starretts return from a July Fourth party. Ryker stops them at the gate of their farm, not for gunplay, but to reason. He offers to buy Starrett's small place and let his few cows mingle with Ryker's large herd. Starrett says no, claiming that he and the sodbusters have been "in the right all the time."
Ryker: You in the right?! Look, Starrett. When I come to this country, you weren’t much older than your boy there. And we had rough times, me and other men that are mostly dead now. I got a bad shoulder yet from a Cheyenne arrowhead. We made this country. Found it and we made it, with blood and empty bellies. The cattle we brought in were hazed off by Indians and rustlers. They don't bother you much anymore because we handled 'em. We made a safe range out of this. Some of us died doin' it. We made it. And then people move in who've never had to rawhide it through the old days. They fence off my range, and fence me off from water. Some of 'em like you plow ditches, take out irrigation water. And so the creek runs dry sometimes. I've got to move my stock because of it. And you say we have no right to the range. The men that did the work and ran the risks have no rights? I take you for a fair man, Starrett.
Starrett: I'm not belittlin' what you and the others did. At the same time, you didn't find this country. There was trappers here and Indian traders long before you showed up and they tamed this country more than you did.
Ryker: They weren't ranchers.
Starrett: You talk about rights. You think you've got the right to say that nobody else has got any. Well, that ain't the way the government looks at it.
Ryker has a point. He was there first; Starrett is a squatter, and the sodbusters use water Ryker needs. Ryker must persuade Starrett to see reason. When nothing works, Ryker hires a gunslinger named Wilson from Cheyenne. Wilson provokes one of the hot-tempered farmers, a former Alabamian Confederate affectionately known as Johnny Reb, and murders him in the street. When Shane and the farmers attend the funeral, Ryker's men set fire to one of their small farms.
Eventually, Shane must do what the novelist created him to do: finish his last gunfight. It is then that we hear Ryker and Shane explicitly state what both realize: The good old days of the West are ending.
Shane: You've lived too long. Your kind of days are over.
Ryker: My days? What about yours, gunfighter?
Shane: The difference is I know it.
Ryker: All right. So we'll all turn in our six-guns to the bartender. We'll all start hoeing spuds. Is that it?
Shane: Not quite yet.
Through it all, Joey intently watches these men in the drama that ends when Shane drills Wilson, and drops Ryker and his brother, in Grafton's saloon. Joey sees men who, while enemies, share several virtues, chief among them resolve, physical courage and the willingness to fight and die for deeply-held beliefs.
One scene occurs early in the film when the sodbusters, or pig farmers, as Ryker's men call them, go to town for supplies. One of the gang picks a fight with Shane, which Shane easily wins. But Ryker's men gang up on Shane after he exchanges a few words with Ryker, who vows to chase Shane out of the valley. Before the big, bloody brawl begins, the boy urges Shane to retreat.
Joey: Shane, come on….
Shane: Joey, you get outta here.
Joey: But Shane, there's too many.
Shane: You wouldn't want me to run away, would you?
Joey: But there's too many, Shane.
Shane: Go on, son, please.
What a lesson for a boy. You don't quit because the odds are against you. After the fight begins and Ryker's gang starts working over Shane, little Joe runs to his father, who, with the other homesteaders, is buying supplies in the general store adjoining the saloon.
Joey: They're all trying to kill him in there.
Joe: Stay with your mother.
Marian: Don't go in …
Joe: Shane's in there.
Another homesteader: I wouldn't do it.
Joe [picking up an ax handle]: What Ryker's got comin' to him ain't fit for a woman to see.
Shane and Joe fight back-to-back, another important example for a boy. You don't forsake a friend and head for the bushes when the going gets rough.
“Shane” is anti-liberal, probably unintentionally, vis–vis the modern liberal idea of what a man is supposed to be. And lest anyone believe the men depicted in "Shane" and other Western stories were not "realistic," historian Roger McGrath proves otherwise. McGrath's gripping accounts of early America and the old West show that many films understate the hardihood, iron will and ferocity of the men, as well as the grit and strength of the women.
u2018Hud'
“Hud” features this same element of a boy's observing the men around him, although this character, Lon Bannon, is older. He is nearing 20, and his uncle, Hud Bannon, is a hero only because Lon doesn't understand Hud's genuine character. But unlike "Shane," “Hud” focuses on this theme, which explores the personality of one man and his relentless strife with those around him, principally his father, a cattle rancher facing ruin.
Philosophically, Hud is an existential nihilist. He seethes with hatred for the world about him. Prosaically, he is an egoist. Hud is vain and full of overweening pride; he cares nothing for anyone but himself and the gratification of his base urges, particularly the sexual. A hedonist, he will rape a woman when he wants, and his hatred for everything and everyone consumes him. He is a bitter, evil man. As the movie posters put it, Hud was "the man with barbed-wire soul."
For Lon, Hud's manly traits are his ability to woo the ladies, even the married kind, and his nose for finding a good time, which usually involves drinking and an occasional fight. But those seemingly attractive traits are really character flaws that set up the conflict with his father, Homer, an honest, hardworking man of oaken principle.
While Hud overindulges in everything, Homer overindulges in nothing. He's the kind of man any boy would want as a father or grandpa … any boy except Hud. In the 1960s, he'd have been a square, and today, we'd call him "repressive" or "repressed." In other words, he was good and decent.
Hud's character unfolds in earnest when Homer learns his cattle have hoof-and-mouth disease and he must destroy the herd. Before the shattering diagnosis, however, they find a few dead cattle but don't know what killed them. Homer asks Hud not to shoot the vultures picking at the carcasses.
"They keep the country clean," the old man says, and besides, it's against law.
"Well, Hud says, "I always say that the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner, and that's what I try to do. Sometimes I lean to one side of it, and sometimes I lean to the other."
Hud mostly leans to the wrong side. Unscrupulous man that he is, Hud wants to sell the herd before the test results come back.
Homer: "That would run the risk of starting an epidemic…."
Hud: "Why this whole country is run on epidemics…Where you been? Big business, price-fixing, crooked TV shows, income tax finagling, souped-up expense accounts. How many honest men do you know? You take the sinners away from the saints and you're lucky if you end up with Abraham Lincoln. So I say let's us put our bread in some of that gravy while it is still hot. "
Homer: "You’re an unprincipled man, Hud."
The movie’s climax occurs when Hud and Lon return from a night of drinking and fighting in town, and Homer, the sober, grim authoritarian to Hud's tempestuous, fun-loving rebel, descends the stairs. The ensuing argument is among the most compelling scenes ever put on film:
Hud: Something seems to be eatin' away at your liver.
Homer: You Hud, like always.
Lon: Hey, what are you climbin' on Hud for?
Homer: You think a lot a Hud, do ya? You think he's a real man. Well, you're bein' took in.
Hud: You listen to him, honcho. He's my Daddy and he knows.
Homer: I know ya. You're smart. You got your share a guts. You can talk a man in trustin' ya, and a woman into wantin' ya.
They bandy a few more words, then Hud says he knows why his father is angry: While drunk behind the wheel, Hud wrecked the car and killed his older brother.
Homer: No boy, I was sick a you a long time before that.
Hud: Well, idn't life full of surprises….
Homer: I took that hard, but I buried it.
Hud: Well, all right, I'll bite, what turned you sour on me, not that I give a damn.
Homer: Just that, Hud. You don't give a damn. That's all. That's the whole of it. You still don't get it, do ya? You don't care about people, Hud, you don't give a damn about 'em.
Lon: Granddad!?
Homer: Oh, you got all that charm goin' for you, and it makes the youngsters want to be like you. That's the shame of it. Because you don't value nothin.' You don't respect nothin.' You keep no check on your appetites at all. You live just for yourself and that makes you not fit to live with.
Hud: Well, my Mama loved me, but she died.
Lon: Why pick on Hud, granddad? He ain't the only one. Just about everybody around here is like him one way or another.
Homer: Well that's no cause for rejoicin,' is it? Lonnie, little by little the face of the country changes because of the men we admire.
Lon: Well, I still think you nailed him pretty hard.
Homer: Did I? Maybe. Old people get as hard as their arteries sometimes. You're just gonna have to make up your mind one day, about what's right and what's wrong.
The scene is profound, and not just because it reveals the enormity of the hatred between father and son. In the lecture to Hud, Homer aims at his grandson and, unveiling a simple truth about human nature, delivers a message for the ages: Evil is glamorous. Youngsters think Hud is a "real man" and want to emulate him. Other men trust him, and women, even married women, fall into his arms. Hud is a seducer.
Eventually, Homer dies and Hud, who tried to get Homer declared non compos mentis, inherits the ranch. Lon has observed his unscrupulous, concupiscent uncle, and while the boy is attracted to the evil Hud represents, the grandfather wins his soul. Lon packs and leaves. He decides what is right and wrong; he chooses correctly. That, of course, goes back to the same theme examined in "Shane": the examples of manhood given to a boy.
Two facets of "Hud's" beauty can't be overstated, one being the flawless performances of the principal actors. As well, the script imparts a profound message and, because of the gifted actors who deliver it, evokes laughter, anger, sadness and happiness in the viewer. When the government agent delivers the devastating news about Homer's cattle, which must be destroyed, he suggests that Homer might sell a few oil leases.
Hud: My Daddy thinks oil is something you stick in your salad dressin'.
Homer: If there's oil down there, you can get it sucked up when I'm down there with it. What's oil to me? What can I do with a bunch of rotten oil wells? I can't ride out every day and prowl amongst 'em, like I can my cattle. I can't breed 'em. I can't feel a smidgen a pride in 'em because they ain't none of my doin'.
Hud: There's money in it.
Homer: I don't want that kind of money.
Like "Shane," “Hud” is an anti-liberal film, most likely unintentionally, an irony given the notorious left-wing politics of its star, Paul Newman.
None Like The Old
Two interesting points about the films: First, the late Brandon de Wilde, killed in a car wreck when he was 30, played both boys. Second, Stevens filmed "Shane" in color, while Ritt shot "Hud" in black and white a decade later. Neither would have worked in the other medium. In each case, the choice imparts an ineffable quality through which each film succeeds on a visual level alone.
Perhaps it is clich, but the cliché is true nonetheless. They don't make films like these anymore, and quite likely, they never will. The literate screenwriting, with cameras focused intently and at length on characters who deliver compelling dialogue, provides penetrating insights into human nature far beyond today’s superficiality. Even the films we consider "good" or even "great" lack the believable dialogue and character development that make them truly memorable.
One reason is that modern films are "jumpy," with characters or scenes on the screen for a few seconds. The camera technique not only reveals the brief attention span of modern audiences, but also the inability of actors to deliver persuasive oratory. If an actor can hold a viewer's attention, he doesn't often get the chance.
Another reason is the culture producing the novelists and screenwriters. Modern fiction and films rarely trifle with genuine gallantry or moral rectitude, or endow characters with instructive virtues and vices, or reveal anything profound about humanity, the nature of courage or cowardice, or good and evil.
Robert E. Lee, that tower of Christian rectitude and valor, would say we don't need "frivolous" novels or movies for that. Wonderful as Shane is, for instance, historical fiction isn’t the only place to find such heroes. Real history, historian McGrath notes, is full of them. But how much less interesting the world would be without these tales from the Schaefers and McMurtrys, and Stevenses and Ritts; or going back a little farther, the Scotts and Shakespeares.
Travel back in time beyond them. In the Good Book, we find the holy apologues called parables, eternal gifts from a humble Carpenter of Nazareth.
Syndicated columnist R. Cort Kirkwood [send him mail] is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va.
