Macadam cowboy

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.

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 often disliked Dustin Hoffman's acting. I watched his "Graduate", "Marathon Man", "Kramer vs. Kramer" etc. and in none of these I liked his style, which to me appeared to be very static and his expressions often stone-like. I liked his acting in movies like "Rain Man" and "Outbreak", but I didn't consider them spectacular either. This movie, however, changed that for me.

This movie is worthy of all the praise it gets. A reasonably simple story is turned into a beautiful movie by the strong performance of Hoffman and John Voight. How a small town stud goes to New York (where ladies are just waiting to get it from him and pay him for it) to find that the reality differs much from the picture he has had of the scenario.. is the story in a nutshell, which is interesting and, which could be true perhaps in any big city anywhere in the world.

The movie, after 35 years, still looks contemporary except for a scene that depicts a 60s-style party of drugs, sex and rock-n-roll.

Highly recommended.

In my opinion, this is one of the greatest movies ever made in America and it deserved every single award it won and it's place on the AFI Top 100 list (though it's shamefully too low on the IMDB Top 250 list, at only #183 as of this writing). If you enjoy acting of the highest calibre (Voight and Hoffman are a superb match), well-drawn characterizations and inventive direction, editing and cinematography, you'll love this just as much as I did. Schlesinger paints a vivid, always credible picture of the late 60s New York City scene and it's many victims struggling to overcome personal demons and survive amidst the amorality, poverty and hopelessness of 42nd Street, New York City.

The filmmaking techniques employed here brilliantly capture the feel of the underground New York film movement (and of the city) and are nothing less than dazzling. I've seen many ideas (including the rapid-fire editing, the handling of the voice-over flashbacks, the drug/trip sequences and the cartoonish face slipped in during a murder scene to convey angst and terror) stolen by other filmmakers.

The relationship between Joe and Ratso is handled in such a way as to be viewed as an unusually strong friendship OR having its homosexual underpinnings. I think the director handled this in a subtle way not to cop out to the censorship of the times, but rather to concentrate his energies on the importance of a strong human connection in life, whether it be sexual or not.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY is a brave, moving film of magnitude, influence and importance that has lost absolutely none of it's impact over the years, so if you haven't seen it, you're really missing out on a true American classic. I recommend this film to everyone.

Score: 10 out of 10.

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.