#1,656. Midnight Cowboy (1969) - The Films of John Schlesinger

Directed By: John Schlesinger

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles




Tag line: "For those who have never seen it and those who have never forgotten it"

Trivia: Dustin Hoffman kept pebbles in his shoe to ensure his limp would be consistent from shot to shot







For a brief period in the mid 1980s, I considered Midnight Cowboy the greatest motion picture ever made.

Having discovered a copy of it at my favorite video palace (the one I described in my write-up of Scorsese’s Mean Streets), I was blown away by the movie’s tone, and how perfectly it conveyed abject poverty. When my attempts to purchase a copy of my own failed (at the time, VHS movies cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $100, so you can imagine what a hard-to-find title like this would have set me back), I instead rented Midnight Cowboy over and over again, sometimes twice a week (I guess nobody else was interested in it; that VHS was always on the shelf when I went looking for it).

And regardless of how often I watch it, Midnight Cowboy still moves me to tears.

Tired of his humdrum life in Texas, Joe Buck (Jon Voight), a cowboy and self-proclaimed ladies’ man, packs his bags and heads to New York City, intent on becoming a high-priced gigolo.

After a few unsuccessful trysts (the first woman he hooks up with is Cass, played by Sylvia Miles, who, despite living in a penthouse, bilks him out of $20), Joe has a chance encounter with Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman). A fast-talker with a bum leg, Ratso agrees, for a small fee, to set Joe up with Mr. O’Daniel (John McGiver), who Ratso claims is a first-class pimp.

When O’Daniel turns out to be nothing more than an aging homosexual with a religious fixation, a pissed-off Joe goes looking for Ratso, who he confronts in a coffee shop a few days later. Broke and with no place to stay (he was recently locked out of his hotel room for non-payment), Joe reluctantly agrees to move in with Ratso, who resides in a condemned building.

Together, the two do what they must to survive, and over time become the best of friends. But with the winter months fast approaching, a sickly Ratso talks more and more of heading south to Florida, convinced the sunshine and fresh air will cure his aliments

Can Joe raise the money to help his pal realize his dream, or will the city swallow them whole?

Jon Voight brings an “aw shucks” innocence to the part of Joe Buck, whose turbulent past is revealed by way of a series of flashbacks, presented during his long bus trip to New York City. Raised by his grandmother (Ruth White), Joe was once in love with a girl named Annie (Jennifer Salt), an affair doomed to end in tragedy (In one very traumatic flashback, we watch as Joe and Annie are both gang raped by a pack of thugs. Her psyche destroyed, a confused Annie tells the police Joe was responsible for the assault).

The moment he arrives in New York City, it’s clear that Joe is completely out of his element, making him the perfect dupe for a con man like Ratso Rizzo. As played by Dustin Hoffman, Ratso is an ornery cripple with a chip on his shoulder, yet despite having spent so much time on the streets, he’s not particularly good at raising cash. What’s more, his health deteriorates rapidly when the cold weather sets in, to the point he can barely walk without falling down.

Two years removed from his portrayal of Ben Braddock, the affluent but confused college student in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, Hoffman plays an entirely different sort of character in Midnight Cowboy, and in so doing established himself as one of the era’s finest actors.

Shining just as brightly as his two stars, director John Schlesinger brings a gritty realism to Midnight Cowboy, giving the film a documentary feel that serves its story perfectly (some scenes look as if they were lifted from a nightly news report). Focusing on his two main characters, tagging along as they traverse the harsh city streets, Schlesinger captures poverty in a way I had never seen before, making it palpable; Joe eventually manages to get his hands on some money, proudly announcing to Ratso that he has $8 in his pocket. Even by late ‘60s standards, $8 wasn’t a lot of money. Yet because we’ve experienced the lows right along with him (at one point, a desperate Joe prostituted himself on a street corner, hooking up with a homosexual teenager, played by a young Bob Balaban, who, in the end, didn’t have the money to pay), we can’t help but share in his excitement.

Sure, $8 won’t take them very far, but the fact that they have any cash at all is reason enough to celebrate.

While I no longer rank it as my all-time favorite movie, Midnight Cowboy is still high up on the list, and remains one of the most poignant exposés of poverty and loneliness ever committed to film.