AFI #43: Midnight Cowboy (1969)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on September 17, 2021.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas were closed and I had to review something, and now I can't stop until I finish.

(M) ★★★★★

Director: John Schlesinger.

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, Ruth White, Jennifer Salt, Bob Balaban.

The candidates for the new season of The Bachelor left something to be desired.

What is Midnight Cowboy really about, aside from being an unremittingly bleak tale about a naive gigolo and a sick grifter trying to make their way in New York?

Is it about the death of the American dream? Is it a profile of the American "underclass" circa the late '60s in the Big Apple? Or is it a portrait of true friendship and humanity in the face of depravity, destitution and ultimately death? 

It is all of these things and more.

Amir Abou-Jaoude, reviewing it for its 50 anniversary in the Stanford Daily, called it "a seismic shift in the American imagination" that "attends to the grime and crime in New York City (and) compels us to pay attention to people who would ordinarily be overlooked". It also shoots down the great American archetype of the cowboy, with Abou-Jaoude gleefully noting Midnight Cowboy won the best film Oscar in the same year John Wayne won best actor for True Grit.

Indeed, there are no such Duke-like heroes here. The cowboy Joe Buck (Voight) heads east to New York in the hopes of finding rich women to fuck for money. From the moment he arrives, he is obviously a fish out of water, and very soon he's drowning - 40 minutes into the film, Joe is poor, broke, pale and looking to suck dick for chump change.

The idea of the cowboy being America, on a quest for the unholy double of sex and money, only to end up emasculated and destitute is too good a piece of symbolism to pass up. It's one of the best pieces of state-of-the-nation social commentary you could find.

Not everyone agreed (Roger Ebert called it "a good movie with a masterpiece inside, struggling to break free") but part of its legacy is its impact - it became the first "X-rated" film (that's NC-17 in today's language, or R in Australia) to win the Oscar for Best Film, beating Hello, Dolly! and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. That a mainstream film could deal so unflinchingly with street-level homosexuality and such powerfully "unpatriotic" symbolism at that time was a big deal.

It remains a tough watch, even 50 years on. I watched this during lockdown, and hoo boy, I would not recommend doing that. There are moments of genuine hilarity - Joe Buck's line "I only get car sick on boats" is gold for both its comedy and character value, while Rizzo's fantasy of what his life will be like in Florida is wonderful. The Warholesque party they both attend is a real trip and a nice diversion of false hope.

But for the most part, it's a downer. Flashback's into Joe's life pre-New York hint at a gang rape, institutionalisation of the mentally ill, and child abuse, while Rizzo's very existence is gut-wrenching, let alone his fate. The hard-hitting nature of it all is amplified by the brilliance of Voight and Hoffman, in what is one of cinema's great double acts. It takes mere seconds of each character being on screen to become absorbed and believe they're real people. Voight portrays Joe as cocksure yet desperate with ease right from the get-go, while Hoffman's Rizzo is instantly iconic.

This unlikely pairing gives the film its flicker of hope amid the darkness. Their fraternal dedication to each other is shown in strange ways - Rizzo lives in a condemned shithole, but is willing to share it, while Joe commits a horrible crime in order to help Rizzo achieve his dream of reaching Florida. Even if you don't buy into the movie's deconstructions of the American dream/image/masculinity, it's impossible to ignore the warped sweetness in its central bromance.

Much like Bonnie & Clyde a couple of years earlier, Midnight Cowboy melds French New Wave style with American subject matter (though critic Jonathan Rosenbaum initially dismissed it as "crassly derivative of the French New Wave"). UK director Schlesinger dives right into this modus operandi straight away, and uses sound, editing and camera moves in deliberately disorientating ways, whether it be in the flashbacks, or Joe's first NY sex encounter. The film is made to be unsettling in places, which also amplifies its savagery.

Midnight Cowboy tends to be remembered for a couple of key things. There's the iconic improvised "I'm walking here" line, the (overused) hit song Everybody's Talkin', the gorgeous theme song, and the imagery of the Joe-Rizzo odd couple strutting through the streets of New York.

Oddly, none of these things conjure the depth of the film, nor its symbolism or status as groundbreaker. They certainly don't capture the dark soul and bleak power of Midnight Cowboy.