Cowboy de medianoche

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.

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.

The only reason I knew of Midnight Cowboy was because it was in the AFI Critic's Top 100. For a top 100 it is not a very well known movie; indeed, I had to look hard to find a copy, I got the DVD version for about half-price. Surprisingly it was only rated M15+ (the uncut version).

I doubt many will take notice of this review (more like comment) so I'll make it brief.

This is perhaps one of the strangest movies I've seen, partly because of the use of montages, artistic filming (very art-house) and the unusual theme. There are many things in the film I still don't understand (I've seen it twice), and it makes for an emotionally confusing film.

The filming and acting were very good, and it is the larger than life characters which make this film memorable. The main character is Joe Buck, a 'cowboy' from Texas who moves to New York to become a male prostitute. He meets the crippled conman Enrico 'Ratso' Rizzo and, of course they become friends going through the usual escapades. What makes the film interesting is the two characters are so different.

I felt the film didn't really develop the relationship between Buck and Enrico Rizzo for the audience to have any real emotional connection, although the ending is certainly quite sad and tragic. You probably already know what happens by reading the reviews, but its pretty obvious from the start.

I personally think the film beautifully and poignantly explores its main themes. The deprivation of humanity (shown by the darkness of the city streets, the breaking-down tenements). Most of the characters in the film exist beyond the law (a conman, giggolo.etc) yet you can't help liking them. Joe Buck is endearing because he is so naive and optimistic, while we begin to feel pity for Ratso later in the film.

I think the film was rated so high because it was certainly very ground-breaking for its period. At the time (And even now) it was definitely not a typical movie (quite art-house). At a time when the cinema was dominated by tired westerns, musicals and dramas a film with such an unusual theme as Midnight Cowboy pops up.

On a personal level, I must say I quite liked the film. The imagery conveyed a dream-like quality. I particularly liked the scene at the party, the music, images etc stay in your mind for a long time after watching. However, as a movie for entertainment's sake it was a bit lacking (not really my style of movie) in thrills. This is a film to be savoured and appreciated, rather than a cheap thrills action flick.

Although I would hardly consider myself qualified to analyse this film, the characters and their motives were quite interesting. From what I understand from the flashbacks, Joe Buck was sexually abused as a child by his grandmother, although it still doesn't seem to be relevant to the story. He is a happy-go-lucky young stud, who suppresses his darker memories. The religious connotations in the film are also puzzling. Some have suggested a homosexual connection between Buck and Ratso, although I fail to see where they have got the idea from. The theme of homo-sexuality in general is more than touched upon in their conversation, and later in Joe Buck's encounter with a lonely old man, but it has little to do with the main story.

Certainly from a technical point of view one of the finest films of the decade (it has more of a 70s feel to it than a 60s feel) and revolutionary for its time touching on subjects few other films dared to do. While it has a simple, sentimental story to it (disguised by a hard edge) the beauty of the film is in the strange, often psychedelic sequences.

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.

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.