The different treatments of the same story in the novel Horseman, Pass By and the film Hud … show clearly the difficulty of translating the "mood" of a work of fiction into film and the necessity imposed by a visual medium of having characters act as visible foils to each other…. [The] film closely follows the plot of the novel, both in specific incident and in general intent. Horseman, Pass By … is remembered in retrospect through the eyes of Lonnie, its now older boyhood observer, who reflects upon the significance of a series of events that had happened on the ranch of his grandfather, Homer Bannon. Homer, a man past eighty years old, his wife, and Hud, her son by a former marriage, live on a ranch in Texas together with Lonnie and Halmea, the black cook and housekeeper. At the beginning of the novel a dead heifer has been discovered that turns out to be a victim of hoof-and-mouth disease. Homer's cattle must all be destroyed in order to halt the spread of the disease, and the reactions of the characters in the novel to the worst disaster which can strike a cattleman, form both the conflict in the novel's plot and the catalyst for Lonnie's transition to adulthood.

In a sense the differences between the two treatments of the story are indicated by the change in title from Horseman, Pass By to Hud. (pp. 365-66)

For the motion picture concerns itself with Hud in a way the novel does not, Hud becoming if not the film's moral hero very definitely its focal character…. [The] film has had to make specific the various generalized aspects of the novel's "single image" of the cowboy and to present them in terms of direct foils. Hence the values that in the novel are scattered among a number of characters, in the film are polarized between Hud and Homer Bannon, both of whom come to represent two distinct and mutually exclusive models for adult life. Rather than having a general view of the adult world as presented retrospectively through a number of characters, the film Lonnie must make a specific choice between two models who are conceived of as being directly opposed to one another. Though at the beginning Hud seems to Lonnie more attractive, by the end of the film Homer has replaced him as the desirable model.

This overly schematic analysis of Hud may give the quite erroneous impression that it is less subtle than Horseman, Pass By. Such is most emphatically not the case. The difference is rather, that in the film subtlety is expressed through the nuances of conflict between the two major characters, Hud and Homer, while in the novel subtlety is expressed through proliferation of characters and … through the retrospective musings of Lonnie himself upon the meaning of his own experience.

Horseman, Pass By is quite consciously conceived of as a mood piece and McMurtry does a brilliantly effective job of presenting, through Lonnie's thoughts, the inchoate but very real yearnings of adolescence for something, it knows not what. In Horseman, Pass By, then, Lonnie's adolescent perspective may effectively be presented in terms of his yearnings for some kind of escape from the world in which he finds himself. (p. 367)

Quite the opposite is true of the symbolic pattern of Hud, in which, if only because we must see both Homer and Hud, we understand very clearly what Lonnie is drawn toward, and not so clearly what exactly he is reacting against. The respective endings of novel and film emphasize the point: for while the metaphor of the novel is of escape, that of the film becomes exile.

Again, the very real difference between the two versions of the story may best be seen by analysing some of the changes from the novel made in the film. First of all is the fact that Halmea is changed in Hud from a black to a white woman, and Hud's rape of her, successful in Horseman, Pass By, is abortive in the film. Though this change originally may well have been prompted by non-esthetic considerations, it is nevertheless an effective one. The rape of Halmea in the novel is accomplished by Hud while Lonnie, who loves her, stands passively by. Though thematically this may make good sense, it is impossible to visualize except upon the screen of retrospective memory. In the novel Lonnie can tell us that this is what happened, without further explanation, and we accept his statement, though not without some mental reservations. But when the scene is actually presented to us we withhold our assent. When we must actually see the scene rather than having it reported to us, the basic improbability of the action becomes evident.

A more important change in the film is in the development of Hud's character. In the novel Hud's attractiveness to Lonnie as an image of successful sexuality is not really insisted upon until the rape of Halmea, while in the film this aspect of Hud's character is emphasized from the beginning. Early in Hud Lonnie is seen searching for Hud, whom he finds in the house of a married woman whose husband is away. The adolescent devil-may-care attractiveness of Hud to Lonnie is clear in this scene, which stands in clear symbolic contrast to the unattractive aspect of the same side of Hud as presented through the attempted rape of Halmea. In Horseman, Pass By the contrast can be, and is, more abstracted.

The necessity in the film to place Hud and Homer Bannon in direct contrast issues in one other really major change, the almost total omission of Jesse, the ranch hand. In Hud Jesse's role is reduced to that of a walk-on part, while in Horseman, Pass By he is a major character.

The reason behind the change is again visual. In the novel both Hud and Jesse act as direct comparisons to Homer. Hud's morality is placed in specific contrast to Homer's, in both novel and film, in terms of the two men's different reactions to the discovery of hoof-and-mouth disease in their cattle. After the initial shock has worn off, Homer realizes that the only moral choice open to him is to have his cattle slaughtered, and he accepts the necessity for the destruction of his entire herd. Hud, in contrast, proposes to Homer that they sell the cattle before the disease is diagnosed and the herd quarantined. If someone is "stupid enough to buy" the cattle, Hud sees no objection to selling them. In short, caveat emptor. "That ain't no way to get out of a tight," Homer says, and refuses.

Jesse, in contrast, acts as a foil to Homer in terms of the theme of escape. For he has been everywhere, Lonnie thinks, and Lonnie's own yearnings for distant places are gratified by listening to Jesse talk of his experiences…. (pp. 367-69)

Hud eliminates the theme of Lonnie's yearning for escape that is central to Horseman, Pass By, and therefore of necessity decreases Jesse's significance and eliminates the minor subplot of the Thalia rodeo and Jesse's failure to perform creditably at it. The need inherent in a visual medium to establish an explicit polarity between Hud and Homer is again the explanation. While in the novel both Hud and Jesse may act as contrasts to different aspects of Homer, in the film the distinction between Hud and Jesse must inevitably be blurred because of the fact that since Homer must be visualized as a person they must be seen in contrast to all of him rather than to specifically differentiated qualities of his character. Therefore Hud and Jesse, had they remained of equal importance in the film, would inevitably have become redundant rather than complements to each other. The difference between them, in short, which is of basic importance to the novel, would have appeared less striking on the screen than their overpowering similarity in terms of their not being Homer. (p. 369)

Again, the film has concentrated its effect rather than spreading it out over a number of characters, since visually the most important thing is not which particular character makes the suggestion [to let the cattle infected with hoof-and-mouth disease run wild, instead of destroying them], but that the suggestion itself is one totally antithetical to Homer's own values. In the film Lonnie has received a direct lesson in terms of two diametrically opposed characters; in the novel, by contrast, the same opposition can be expressed without redundance by more than one character, if only because each character, if not seen, is visualized by the reader as representative of a more or less isolated point of view rather than as a person of flesh and blood, someone who stands in opposition to relatively specific qualities in Homer Bannon rather than to his entire character.

This necessity to condense all the foils to Homer in the character of Hud inevitably implies the one major change between novel and film—a total reversal of the ending. Lonnie learns, through the action of Horseman, Pass By, the futility of his own generalized longings for escape. The world, he discovers, when viewed with, in Yeats's phrase, "a cold eye," is not the romantic place he had thought it was at the beginning of the novel. Captive at the beginning of the story of the common adolescent belief that somewhere there must be more "life" than there is in one's own environment, Lonnie learns the truth symbolized by the name of the town—Thalia—where the story's action has taken place: that the stuff of life and history and epic poetry may be discovered in one's own surroundings if one has the intelligence to know where to look for it.

In the novel, then, Lonnie's education culminates in his acceptance of the world for what it is and his rejection of the unreal attitudes toward it he had held at the beginning of the story. (pp. 369-70)

In Hud the ending is quite different. Here, Lonnie's newly won maturity has taught him not to accept the world as it is, but rather to see the validity of Homer's attitude toward life and to reject the tempting but ultimately immoral standpoint represented by Hud…. [And] so at the end of the film he sets out to make his own way in the great world he has rejected in the novel. While the ending of Horseman, Pass By showed Lonnie's new maturity by emphasizing his realization of the flimsiness of his adolescent longings for escape, the ending of Hud shows it in terms of his symbolic acceptance of Homer's attitude toward the world and his rejection of Hud's.

The major differences between [the novel, Horseman, Pass By, and the film Hud] … are largely implicit in the very different points of view required by the two media. The primacy of vision in the film, though perhaps an obvious point, cannot be too strongly insisted upon. It results first of all in the necessity for an almost complete denial of both the retrospective mood and the nostalgic point of view upon which the [novel relies heavily]…. The internalization of the fictional point of view implied by the reminiscences of an older hero reflecting upon his past is simply impossible to achieve with either success or consistency upon film for two reasons: first of all, the narrator of the novel must inevitably become one among many characters in the film; and secondly, the action of the story when seen must be seen as occurring in the present.

An equally important, and less obvious, difference between novel and film also follows from the primacy of vision implied by the latter. For although the phrase "cast of thousands" has become a cliché for describing the so-called "epic" film, in fact the necessity for externalization implicit in the film results in an overwhelming tendency to simplify by reducing the number of characters. (pp. 370-71)

For all their specific differences, however, both media have in common one basic attitude toward their material…. This attitude comes ultimately from an environmentalist belief, inherent in primitivism, that man reflects in moral terms the physical nature of his environment. This belief, which is in fact nothing more than an assumption, is treated as though it were axiomatic for interpreting the materials of the great American epic. (p. 371)

The great problem, then, shared by both the Western film and Western fiction is the problem of presenting man against the landscape. What is the landscape, first of all: the beauty of the Grand Tetons or the ugliness of the Bannon ranch? And how does man stand against it: does he stand for it, symbolizing in detail what it expresses in general? or does he stand in contrast to it, repudiating everything it represents? There are of course no simple answers to these questions, all expressions of a basic ambiguity in the American identity; no answers, that is, except for the statement of the metaphorical problem and of its ritual solution. (p. 372)