Midnight Cowboy

Washing pots inside a diner's not for you, there's so much talent, you have bursting to come through, a new outfit is acquired, naive cowboy's now attired, with a ticket to New York, where dreams come true. Alas you're business acumen is undeveloped, cash not moving in directions that you'd hoped, as a male prostitute, you have no clients, you're destitute, there are memories of the past, that you evoke.

As good as it was all those years ago, and perhaps even better as it's aged, with two great central performances, although Dustin Hoffman is outstanding as the luckless 'Ratso' befriended, by the equally unfortunate Joe Buck, who's also rather gullible.

Dreaming of a more glamorous existence, an idealistic Texas greenhorn (Jon Voight) walks out on his mundane dishwasher's life and hops a bus bound for New York City, certain he'll find instant success as a high-priced gigolo. The city, as always, has different lessons in store. Soon, our cowboy's strapped for cash and out on the street, too soft for the harsh realities of his dream job but too proud to accept anything less. In desperation, he hooks up with a similarly out-of-luck grifter (Dustin Hoffman) and the two develop a chemical bond that sees them through some dangerously lean times, while the busiest metropolis on the planet buzzes and bustles, blissfully oblivious, on the other side of the wall.

Notorious as the first X-rated film to see wide release, Midnight Cowboy earned its reputation with a risqué subject matter, explicit nudity, glamorized drug use and frank depictions of homosexuality (with a whole boatload of associated slurs). A lot of it still seems daring and edgy today, so I can only imagine how it looked to the viewers of 1969. Then again, there's a chance the setting itself adds a thing or two to the modern shock value. This is a real time capsule of a picture, a breathing document of a city that no longer exists, with an emphasis on subcultures and undercurrents that were pushed out of all the glossy framed photos. It's sixties New York, all right, but this particular close-up is more interested in the warts on its subject's nose and the dirt under its fingernails than the carefully-primped clothes and hairstyle it wears to mask the unsightly bits.

The unflattering depiction is fascinating, particularly to someone like me, who didn't live through that era, but the story often plods and telegraphs its intentions, with an unconventional series of flashbacks only further complicating matters. Hoffman and Voight are dynamite together, an unlikely duo whose connection resonates through the smoggy haze, and serve as major boons to a film that could have floundered otherwise.

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

This is such a gritty, touching story of two ordinary vulnerable young men, told with such honesty, it's impossible to criticize it taken whole. "Midnight Cowboy" is a terrific movie.

It's terrific because of the two actors--an astonishing Dustin Hoffman, still a new name in Hollywood but already famous from "The Graduate" in 1967. And an equally astonishing Jon Voight, making his first large role in a movie. Each is a type of struggling man living on the fringe of New York (barely surviving in a boarded up building), extreme but never a caricature. They gel as a pair, helping each other but with a bit of reluctance because neither wants to quite admit they need help.

It's terrific further because of the filming, with lots of available light magic in dingy places. The cinematographer, Adam Holender, is remarkably making his first film here, though that might explain the freshness to a lot of the filming. There is in particular a lot of long lens (telephoto) shooting between more intimate scenes, showing layers of people and isolating the star in a moving world (a difficult thing to do with good focus).

It's also terrific for the writing, not just for the story but for the dialog. It strikes so subtly to some truth you don't quite expect, even though it's simple and almost obvious. The screenplay won an Oscar, as did the movie (Best Picture) and director John Schlessinger (Best Director). It's worth noting that Schlessinger is a British director with some very tightly conceived movies already under his belt (including the fabulous "Darling"), and here he seems to make New York as familiar as if he'd grown up here. Along those lines, Voight, playing the naive cowboy to a perfect pitch, is a native New Yorker. And Hoffman, though familiar with the city, is an L.A. kid.

Where does the movie run into trouble? Why isn't it in the top ten of all time? I think it might boil down to three kinds of inserts into flawless the main narrative. The first is a series of flashbacks that in various ways try to "explain" or fill in the psychological background of Voight's character. As if it needs explaining. Or if it does benefit us all to know how he got to his beautiful troubled state, maybe there is something shocking and sensational about the inserts, as effective as they are on their own nightmarish terms.

A second "insert" is a series of short sunny daydreams Hoffman's character has envisioning life in Florida in the sun. It's comic relief, and it mostly works, but there are cracks there. Finally there is a section of the actual narrative where the two men go to a party they've been invited to for spurious reasons (weird luck, mostly). It's too obviously an excuse to film a scene in a drug-addled Warhol-esque party. The hosts are effete artist types who want to film some strange New Yorkers out of context, and so we see the film film these filmmakers and so on. A great scene, but weirdly out of place.

But all of his is to be taken in stride as the meat of the story kicks back in each time. And here, with a melancholy soundtrack, you will be moved and entranced. Amazing stuff. Brave and a lesson in how a film can be adventurous and heartfelt and not painfully slick, all at once. And succeed artistically and commercially.

I worked the Times Square area for several years, circa 1969, as a NYC Police Officer. I can tell you that the title characters and many others in this fabulous movie were right on the money. There were very few "normal" folks who were regulars to Times Square at that time. Most visitors and tourists looked right through them but they were all there. Sexual perverts aka chickenhawks, Pimps, and of course the young kids coming off the buses from the heartland by the hundreds, ready to be savaged. The music, drug culture, attitudes of too many parents, and excitement of being a young, all combined to make people think they could "make it" in an area like TS. So very many never made it to adulthood because of the lifestyle: drugs, beatings and assaults were so common. Those who survived were damaged psychologically as well as physically. Personally, I never felt so overwhelmed in my life. While handling one case, you just knew there were dozens more happening at the same moment in time. Midnight Cowboy was just one little slice of life on 42nd Street. An excellent movie.

I saw MIDNIGHT COWBOY in easter 1970 when i was 15. It was at a very quiet matinée in a very cold rural mountain holiday resort town in in Australia. I was alone as I had gone for a walk but discovered I was in time for the matinée. It was one of the great cinema experiences of my teenage life and left an impression on me that still resonates. After the screening, it was freezing and foggy outside and almost dark. I walked to a nearby park in the freezing fog, sat on a wet bench and cried and cried until the tears began to freeze too. I wiped them away and went home for dinner. Nobody the wiser except me. Recently I was the film again for the first time in 40 years. I am simply awestruck at the sense of NY 1969 that floods from the screen, the sense of the time anywhere in 1969 and the fact that the film is shattering in it's depiction of poverty and friendship in a bleak city. Recently I also went to NY and found that as fascinating for I felt NY was completely safe and totally unlike the squalor seen in their lives in the film. NY today is very pretty and epic and like a fun park. I have enduring respect and admiration for this extraordinary film. I hope you do too. The performances by Voight and Hoffman are award worthy, and Joe Buck, like Forrest Gump is the sexy flip side of the American Everyman. Directed by a Brit: John Schlesinger whose International eye for NY and the tawdry but fascinating life of USA 1969 has allowed this film to be as great as it is, only made one other great American films and that is the equally tangible and shocking Hollywood pit of 1937 called DAY OF THE LOCUST. Both films have trailers which every young film maker today should study for a perfect lesson in 'preview' creation.