Martin Ritt‘s Hud (1963) pays off beautifully in the final 60 seconds — actually the last ten or fifteen. Paul Newman‘s fuck-it gesture reflected a strain of nihilism in the culture that hadn’t been acknowledged very much in previous American films, which had always sold a certain tidy morality. I’m trying to think of other films over the last 45-plus years that have ended as coldly and cleanly. I’m not saying they haven’t been made; they’re just not coming to mind.

July 2, 2009by Jeffrey Wells22 Comments