Young, handsome Texan Joe Buck (Jon Voight) travels to New York City to seek his fortune as a male prostitute. He befriends a street-smart layabout, Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), and the two try attempt to make their way in the grimy, unpredictable metropolis.
Doug says...
Well it’s been a decade filled with a wide variety of films, from musicals (West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Oliver!) to soaring epics such as Lawrence of Arabia and A Man For All Seasons. All this makes the fact that the 1960s ends with Midnight Cowboy even more extraordinary.
Because this is a film of a new era. There’s male and female nudity, frequent blunt depictions of sex (both straight and gay) and overall the depiction of a grimy, unromantic New York that feels akin to more modern films like Se7en. Our hero Joe Buck is a fresh-faced handsome country boy who has set his heart on coming to New York - to make his fortune as a rent boy. My Fair Lady it ain’t.
It’s also fascinating for the sheer depths we see him plumb to. He uncomfortably lets a man perform oral sex on him, he lives in a condemned building with his friend Rico (Dustin Hoffman delivering a performance where you can actually feel the dirt and grime on his skin and clothes), and his disillusionment & violent streak gets worse and worse.
And it’s not just him who suffers. Everyone in the city is bizarre - from a woman who appears to be high on acid that ecstatically moves a toy mouse over her own face, to the revellers at a strange ‘art’ party who silently film each other and speak in monotones. But Joe Buck has a past, hinted at through black and white grainy memories, that speak of his girlfriend and himself being caught having sex and being attacked by gangs. It’s never made clear what happened, and the nightmarish quality of these memories mean you never believe quite what you’re seeing.
The film’s techniques are fresh - and reminiscent of Citizen Kane in its unexpected modern take. Camera angles are used to their best effect, scenes are shot in black and white, colour, grainy textures, and director John Schlesinger manages to convey the dirt and grime of these situations. New York rarely seems so unglamorous and lonely, as when Joe hangs about outside cinemas, hoping that this time he’ll meet a rich woman ready to make him her lover.
Ultimately, it’s not a film that has much of a plot, bearing real similarity to slow-burning character studies like Withnail & I. Boasting two excellent central performances, and subject matters that are refreshingly modern and open in comparison to the coy references of the early ‘60s and before, this is a film harkening a new hero.
Highlight
Dustin Hoffman bursts on to the screen as Ratso Rizzo, and delivers a compelling, provocative performance that ends up stealing the whole film.
Lowlight
It feels a little long at times, considering there’s minimal plot, and I ended up with a strange emptiness, as if there’d been a message that hadn’t quite been delivered.
Mark
7/10
Paul says...
It’s true, of all the decades we have seen the biggest changes in subject matter during the 1960s. We started with coy sex comedy, The Apartment and have ended with a film that literally has Jon Voight buttock-naked in the shower.
This is an obvious reflection on the sweeping social change throughout the decade, but what Midnight Cowboy does very well is that, on its own, it creates a unique and memorable image of America. In New York City, Joe Buck comes across people ignoring, dismissing and mocking him. And the first woman that does eventually hire his physical services manages to convince him that she had no idea he was a gigolo. Rizzo himself is so permanently covered in grime and lives in the most abject squalor that he would fit in well with the sewer wildlife. He even moves like a rat with his bustling limp and twitchy eye. In this New York City, there are no endless opportunities- you’re either rich and uppity, or poor and resorting to petty crime to get by. Complete with the despondent harmonica-based score and the blink-and-you-miss-them peace protests in the background, this is, in short, the jaded Vietnam-era America as seen through the eyes of the pacifist Liberal.
The surrealist aspect of the film is refreshing too. There are several fast-paced montages at times of intensity that combine several strands of thought. When Joe flees a bonkers pimp whom he was recommended to by Rizzo, he runs for the subway whilst at the same time recalling images of what I think is the kidnap and rape of his girlfriend in Texas (this is never fully explained), sees images of what he is actually doing, images of himself managing to track down Rizzo and strangle him in revenge, and images of himself failing to track down Rizzo. I’ve never been a fan of art-house-style film-making but segments like that display a character’s past, present, what they want to do and what they are worried about, without the use of lengthy exposition. We see similar montages throughout that provide some insight into Joe’s relationship with his Grandmother, who appears to have raised him.
“Some” insight, however, is the key phrase here. The film promised me some explanation for these frantic, ethereal internal thoughts and memories. It’s obvious that some are true and some are false because they conflict with each other, but I was looking forward to a revisitation to Joe’s past that would clarify why he has this desperate-to-please attitude to life and why he can’t or won’t amount to anything other than a sex worker. He could have explained some the clues about his character later on (he has a good listener in the form of Rizzo), or his later actions could have related back to these flashbacks. Neither occurs. And, as a result, I felt no real investment in his character. Dustin Hoffman’s Rizzo is more watchable because Hoffman transforms as magnificently as Ron Moody did into Fagin last week. But again, there is no insight into the character’s motivations or past to explain why he has ended up living like a mangy fox in South London, and done nothing much about it. Perhaps audiences at the time were so disenchanted with a Vietnam-battling government, that a street-rat such as he needed no further explanation.
Highlight
Hoffman’s performance is, indeed, the stuff of legend. My favourite moment was when he sends Voight into a women-only hotel to pick up clients. As Rizzo waits outside, he dreams of glamorous Florida hotels where he lives his life partying with pretty women under a languorous sun. When Voight is suddenly thrown out of the hotel, the women in the day dream turn on Hoffman, and throw him into the pool. It’s fun, but a sad slice of internal monologue.
Lowlight
I would have liked the film to connect up more with the establishing flashbacks to create a “full circle” structure. What do Joe’s Grandmother and ex-girlfriend have to do with where he is now? We can only guess, and that’s not satisfying enough for me.
Mark
5/10
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