Paul Newman is the amoral “man with the barbed wire soul” as the tagline puts it in this 1963 adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s classic Horseman, Pass By. As with much of McMurtry’s works, a young boy on the cusp of losing his innocence idolizes the wrong cowboy – the film’s trailer declares him “mean and magnificent… alone and arrogant” – and through him learns hard lessons about the fragility of masculinity, the social contract, and the good ol’ days that perhaps never really existed. McMurtry is the master of at once deconstructing and indulging in nostalgia for the idea of small-town Texas, and this is one of his best and most heartbreaking stories. – Lina Fisher
