Midnight Cowboy | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby may not have thought Midnight Cowboy "a film for the ages" when it first appeared in 1969, but the movie represents a particular cultural instance of how Hollywood catered to a new youth market and attempted to bring into the mainstream the underground culture of the late 1960s. A bleak tale made poignant by the tender friendship between a naive Texas stud and the petty con who first hustles him, Midnight Cowboy follows the pair as they struggle to survive the unforgiving streets of New York, dreaming of a better life in Florida.

Directed by British filmmaker John Schlesinger, Midnight Cowboy is based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy and was adapted for the screen by Waldo Salt. While Herlihy's story focuses predominantly on Joe, the rather dim country boy turned big city hustler, Waldo Salt's screenplay draws out the character of Ratso Rizzo, the limping con artist who befriends Joe. Another notable difference between the novel and the screenplay involves the sexual politics of a number of scenes. In particular, a sexual encounter between Joe and a pickup in the film is played out violently, while in the novel theexchanges between Joe and the man are situated within the larger context of the growing S/M culture of the 1950s and 1960s. While many critics of the time read the relationship between Joe and Ratso as nonsexual, others (particularly openly gay reviewers) argued that they were missing the film's subtext. As Michael Moon wrote in 1993, "Despite its apparent concession to the desire of many of its viewers to believe that Joe Buck … and Ratso Rizzo … are 'really' and ultimately 'innocent,' Midnight Cowboy suggests something much more complicated, and much more perverse, about its protagonists and the masses of men they represent."

Midnight Cowboy was technically Dustin Hoffman's first film role, but multiple script revisions prevented the film from being released until 1969, two years after Hoffman's appearance in Mike Nichols' The Graduate. This film catapulted the young actor to stardom for his performance as Benjamin Braddock, a disenchanted yet sympathetic college graduate desperately seeking a life different from that of his parents. Hoffman's turn as Ratso in Midnight Cowboy was vastly different from his previous work on screen, and the two performances hinted at the versatility of the talented actor.

Midnight Cowboy was Jon Voight's first starring role, but the actor was not Schlesinger's original choice to play Joe. Michael Sarrazin, a Canadian actor who had starred in films such as The Flim-Flam Man and The Sweet Ride, was Schlesinger's first pick for the role. When a contractual obligation required Sarrazin to film They Shoot Horses Don't They? during the time when shooting for Midnight Cowboy was scheduled, Voight stepped into the role that audiences would remember for years to come.

Midnight Cowboy was shot during a hot summer in 1968 for about $3 million, an average budget for a Hollywood feature made during the 1960s. The film marked the American directorial debut of Schlesinger, a member of the British New Cinema who got his start in filmmaking as a documentarist for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Schlesinger's previous films were influenced by Italian Neo-Realism, Britain's Free Cinema documentary movement, and the French New Wave, influences found in many of the films of his contemporaries such as Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson. Schlesinger achieved commercial success with Darling in 1965, which introduced Julie Christie to audiences and showcased the director's eye for detail, ear for dialogue, and fascination with interpersonal relationships.

Dustin Hoffman has said that Los Angeles audiences walked out of test screenings of Midnight Cowboy, yet the film set records upon its release in May of 1969. Given an X rating (currently NC-17) by the newly formed ratings system for its graphic depiction of violence and sexuality, Midnight Cowboy played for over a year at both the Baronet theater in Manhattan and the Mann Bruin in Los Angeles, eventually grossing more than $20 million. Two years earlier audiences had been stunned and seduced by the almost lyrical depiction of violence in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch also made an impression on audiences hungry for a new kind of cinema. As a group these films heralded the beginning of New Hollywood, and Midnight Cowboy continued the trend of American films influenced by social and cultural changes as well as European film movements such as the French New Wave.

Midnight Cowboy received mixed critical reviews upon its release. Although Vincent Canby doubted the film's timelessness, he described it as "brutal but not brutalizing," and wrote that some of the scenes were "so rough and vivid it's almost unbearable." Characteristically market-conscious, Variety commented on Joe Buck's fashions: "Whether fringed leather coats of the kind he wears on screen will hereafter come into, or go out of fashion around town is one of the provocative questions that the film poses." The reviewer was prescient, however, when predicting that Midnight Cowboy would be "both hailed and denounced" by audiences and critics alike. Many reviewers praised the surprisingly tender relationship between Joe and Ratso while criticizing Schlesinger's heavy reliance on self-conscious stylization popular in films of the time. Despite an uneven critical reception, Midnight Cowboy was recognized by the international film community with seven Academy Award nominations and numerous British Academy Awards as well as the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actor and a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer, both awarded to Voight. Of all the awards and accolades the film received, the most notable was its Academy Award for Best Picture. Although its rating was commuted from an X to an R after its Oscar win, Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film in Hollywood's history to have received the prestigious award.

In 1994, 25 years after its controversial explosion onto movie screens and into the collective cultural consciousness, Midnight Cowboy was re-released into theaters. The re-issue of the film was tied to the re-emergence of the film's distributor, United Artists, after a six-year hiatus. Commenting on his film 25 years later, Schlesinger predicted that the same film pitched to a studio executive in the 1990s would not get made. Noting that the tenderness between the male characters would still resonate for contemporary audiences, Schlesinger sadly acknowledged that in a climate of political correctness, the depiction of this relationship would have to change. "Lack of knowledge is awfully freeing," a wistful Schlesinger told the New Yorker.

The film that Roger Ebert once likened to a Diane Arbus exhibit may seem tame compared to contemporary cinema, but when Midnight Cowboy appeared in 1969, it represented changes not simply in American culture but, as Moon has written, in how the culture conceived of the "real" America. Released during the cinematic heyday of the New Hollywood, Midnight Cowboy illustrates the narrative and stylistic elements of that period while foreshadowing what one writer called "the antiheroic bleakness of the Seventies films to come."

Canby, Vincent. "Midnight Cowboy." The New York Times. May 26,1969, 54.

"John Schlesinger, Joe Buck, and Ratso." The New Yorker. February 28, 1994, 41-42.

Land. "Midnight Cowboy." Variety. May 14, 1969.

Levy, Emanuel. And the Winner Is—: The History and Politics of the Oscar Awards. New York, Ungar, 1987.

Moon, Michael. "Outlaw Sex and the 'Search for America': Representing Male Prostitution and Perverse Desire in Sixties Film (My Hustler and Midnight Cowboy)." Quarterly Review of Film & Video. Vol. 15, No. 1, 1993, 27-40.

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