Saddle baggage

A requiem for America's disappearing morality and way of life, the intense pessimism of Hud (1963) is often overshadowed by the lean and muscled, blue-eyed spectacle of Paul Newman as an amoral, tomcatting deep Texas cowboy. The film won three Academy Awards, including one for Patricia Neal, who will introduce Hud as part of the Rialto's weekend-long "Oscar's Leading Ladies" series. Also featured in the series are Mildred Pierce, Klute and It Happened One Night, among others.

In this testosterone-spiked family melodrama, ailing patriarch Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas) and beer swiggin', skirt-chasing, no-account Hud (Newman) are the father and son with very different ideas of how to run their West Texas ranch. The men wage a battle for the soul of the next generation and the symbolic future of America in Hud's puppy dog sweet 17-year-old nephew Lonnie (Brandon De Wilde).

Homer has founded his ranch on old-fashioned virtues like hard-work, grit and morality and Hud is the next generation, anxious to make a buck no matter who gets hurt. Derisively eyeing his father's outmoded notion of good, Hud chortles: "Big business, price-fixing, crooked TV shows, income tax finagling, souped-up expense accounts. How many honest men do you know?"

As Alma, the ranch housekeeper, cook and lust object, Patricia Neal manages to make lines like "Wanna Fig Newton?" smolder despite her jaded, matter-of-fact brand of sex appeal. Barefoot and husky-voiced like some scrub-brush Sophia Loren, Alma uses a soup ladle and apron like Humphrey Bogart uses a bottle of booze. Housewifery has never looked so badass or so appealing. Man-burned but still game, Alma alternately mothers and teases Lonnie and backs slowly away from Hud, making her one of the most steel-willed and interesting of '60s heroines: Angie Dickinson without the eventual weak knees. Though there are many choice quips in Hud, Neal peels off one of the flintiest after Hud propositions her. "I've done my time with one cold-blooded bastard. I'm not looking for another."

Hud screens March 9 at 7 p.m. Rialto Center for the Performing Arts, 80 Forsyth St. $6, $8 for double feature. 404-651-4727. For a complete lineup of films in the "Oscar's Leading Ladies" series, visit www.rialtocenter.org.