Midnight Cowboy (1969)

This movie is a very fine film with a lot of merits. The film does look great, with beautiful scenery and crisp cinematography and the lighting is very atmospheric and always fits perfectly with every scene. The music is wonderful, with the highlight being the excellent Everybody's Talking', the story is very strong focusing on the friendship of the two main characters and well-paced and the dialogue is thought-provoking and poignant. The direction is top notch using every trick in the book and wonderfully and the characters constantly captivate. And this is helped by the magnificent playing of Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffmann, especially Hoffmann who I personally think should have got the Best Actor Oscar that year. Overall, a truly fine film. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Fmovies: Watching Midnight Cowboy is like taking a masterclass in acting/ directing/ cinematography/ editing/ writing. I was too young to watch it when it was originally released, and only saw it for the first time a couple of years ago, but it has absolutely stood the test of time, and I have watched it several times since.

Everything about this film is brilliant, from the poignant performances from Voight and Hoffman (even though I know this movie well, I still find myself welling up every time Voight flashes one of his innocently pained looks, or Hoffman coughs in his sickly and ominous way) to the stunning cinematography and superbly edited dream sequences.

It's a shame that more of our contemporary filmmakers aren't prepared to take a risk on making movies that are as visually and aurally interesting as this one. Midnight cowboy should be required viewing at all film schools.

10/10

Two desperate characters meet. It's not a meet cute in the classic sense of the word but it's not far away from it either. It's also a melodrama, operatic but hidden in a reality that can't possibly be real. Dustin Hoffman is as bold as Bette Davis in a Warner Brothers melodrama. Amazing. And Jon Voight? - He wasn't the first choice, Michael Sarrazin was. Jon Voight plays his whore with a heart of gold with the decency of a Mary Astor in another melodrama from the the 40's. I've seen Midnight Cowboy 5 times, the first time in a theater, three other times in VHS or DVD - Last night I saw it in a huge screen in the house of a friend. HD I believe and, Oh my God. I wept. I was taken over completely by this two devastating, truly devastating characters. John Schlesiger the director, a genius. British by birth but he showed us an America that most people didn't know existed, not even Americans. This is a film for the ages.

Midnight Cowboy fmovies. It's not quite the timeless masterpiece you would hope it would be based on the acclaim it garnered, but 1969's "Midnight Cowboy" is still a powerhouse showcase for two young actors just bursting into view at the time. Directed by John Schlesinger and written by Waldo Salt, the movie seems to be a product of its time, the late 1960's when American films were especially expressionistic, but it still casts a spell because the story comes down to themes of loneliness and bonding that resonate no matter what period. The film's cinematic influence can still be felt in the unspoken emotionalism found in Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain".

The meandering plot follows Joe Buck, a naive, young Texan who decides to move to Manhattan to become a stud-for-hire for rich women. Full of energy but lacking any savvy, he fails miserably but is unwilling to concede defeat despite his dwindling finances. He meets a cynical, sickly petty thief named "Ratso" Rizzo, who first sees Joe as an easy pawn. The two become dependent on one another, and Rizzo begins to manage Joe. Things come to a head at a psychedelic, drug-infested party where Joe finally lands a paying client. Meanwhile, Rizzo becomes sicker, and the two set off for Florida to seek a better life. This is not a story that will appeal to everyone, in fact, some may still find it repellent that a hustler and a thief are turned into sympathetic figures, yet their predicaments feel achingly authentic.

In his first major role, Jon Voight is ideally cast as he brings out Joe's paper-thin bravado and deepening sexual insecurities. As Rizzo, Dustin Hoffman successfully upends his clean, post-college image from "The Graduate" and immerses himself in the personal degradation and glimmering hope that act as an oddly compatible counterpoint to Joe. The honesty of their portrayals is complemented by Schlesinger's film treatment which vividly captures the squalor of the Times Square district at the time. The director also effectively inserts montages of flashbacks and fantasy sequences to fill in the character's fragile psyches. Credit also needs to go to Salt for not letting the pervasive cynicism overwhelm the pathos of the story. The other performances are merely incidental to the journeys of the main characters, including Brenda Vaccaro as the woman Joe meets at the party, Sylvia Miles as a blowsy matron, John McGiver as a religious zealot and Barnard Hughes as a lonely out-of-towner.

The two-disc 2006 DVD package contains a pristine print transfer of the 1994 restoration and informative commentary from producer Jerome Hellman since unfortunately neither Schlesinger nor Salt are still living. There are three terrific featurettes on the second disc - a look-back documentary, "After Midnight: Reflections on a Classic 35 Years Later", which features comments from Hellman, Hoffman, Voight and others, as well as clips and related archive footage such as Voight's screen test; "Controversy and Acclaim", which examines the genesis of the movie's initial 'X' rating and public response to the film; and a tribute to the director, "Celebrating Schlesinger".

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 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.