I decided we needed a Paul Newman retrospective, and this was well overdue. He is an uncaring, rebellious bastard in this, who almost bonds with his nephew Brandon de Wilde (Shane) and has a clearly terrible relationship with his father Melvyn Douglas. Patricia Neal the housekeeper tolerates him until he tries to rape her.
From Larry McMurtry source novel, it feels similarly melancholic as The Last Picture Show, and they're both about the passing of the old ways; in this case, foot and mouth destroys Douglas's cattle farm and whole way of life - what good are oil wells, he asks, when you can't feed them and look after them and breed them?
Newman and Neal are both great - she won the Oscar, he lost to Poitier in Lilies of the Field. James Wong Howe's splendid widescreen photography also won, as did Douglas. The screenplay is by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., who wrote the earlier Ritt film The Long, Hot Summer. The music's by Elmer Bernstein, with some lovely acoustic guitar passages. Paramount.
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