Midnight Cowboy (1969): Eitan's Take

We're getting to the point where it's going to be very difficult to separate my own preexisting opinions and emotions about these films from the critical/cultural viewpoint I'm supposed to be lending in this project. Midnight Cowboy has been one of my favorite films since I was a teenager. In this small, strange package, I always felt there was an epic and intimate story about masculinity, sex, sadness, urban alienation, and surrogate families; my heart ached for it when I was younger, but seeing it tonight, my appreciation for this absolutely brilliant film only grew.

It doesn't even need to be said that Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman turn in elegant, heartbreaking performances. Through the bleak storyline and dirty cityscape, their Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo stand out as two of the most indelible, flawless portraits of wounded masculinity ever committed to celluloid. Director John Schlesinger, who never directed a better or more vital film, gives these two loners room to breathe. Their interactions -- always lying somewhere between painful and funny -- are written and filmed with grace and trust.

Roger Ebert has said that this is a good movie with a masterpiece inside, trying to break free. I've always viewed it the other way around; despite all its potential flaws (self-conscious 60's cinematography, gimmicky editing) it amounts to way more than the sum of its parts. What could have been a trite story about loneliness in the red light district is instead an atmospheric, heart-crushing study of the late-60's collision between idealism and the harsh light of depressing cultural truths. But we are rarely tempted to see Joe and Ratso as vessels of a cultural message (the way we see Virgil Tibbs and Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night). Instead, they are the quintessential drifters, desperately shuffling through a world too grim and fast-paced for their tastes. In that sense, the movie is completely timeless -- they will always resemble the desolate fringes of any culture, anywhere, in any decade. It should be said, also, that the film deals with Joe Buck's queerness in a sophisticated and disarming way. I give the film a lot of credit for that.

This is one of the most important, inescapably haunting and brilliant films ever made, and I fully appreciate its broad influence on popular culture. But it is also a deeply personal film for me, and one I have definitely grown older with. 10/10.

Midnight Cowboy (1969): Shira's Take

This movie won Best Picture? Even for 1969, that's hard to believe. There is just absolutely nothing remotely glamorous or enjoyable to watch. It's painful throughout. From the first moment we know Joe Buck is going to ask a woman to pay him for sex through Rico "Ratso" Rizzo's illness, we the viewers are uncomfortable. But it's really good at that. This movie has the causing pain to its viewers thing down. And honestly, I'm glad I watched it. Though it was made immediately after Dustin Hoffman stopped being adorable (he was deliciously disgusting in this movie), it was also made before Jon Voight's skin began to melt off his face, and he was cute in his naive way. Of course, the ideas about loneliness and friendship were really interesting. And Hoffman really did give an unbelievable performance. I mean, I've seen the majority of his Oscar-nominated performances (all but 1974's Lenny) and this one blew the others away.

Various thoughts on things about the movie: The music was...well, I hate "Everybody's Talkin" so I suppose you know how I felt about the music. There were a number of rather obvious but still enjoyable symbolic camera shots--Rizzo's dead face with the reflection of the palm trees he wanted so desperately to experience comes to mind. The drug-induced hallucination scene was cheesy, but every movie to come out in 1968-1969 was obligated to have one scene that would be more enjoyable on LSD. A better/more depressing movie to come out in 1969 that wasn't even nominated for Best Picture is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? I'm still wondering whether the gay thing was an intended subtext or not. Anyway, it's an 8/10.