-Spoilers Within-
`Midnight Cowboy' was nothing like I expected. Generally, when you watch a movie where the plot is essentially a train wreck waiting to happen, there is a low point, a high point and then a REALLY low point. `Midnight Cowboy', the story of a cocksure and (briefly) idealistic and naïve hustler from Texas who moves to New York City to make his fortune doesn't have a high point. Indeed, I found myself actually wanting Joe Buck (Voight) and Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman) to have that brief moment where they actually succeed in promoting and selling Buck's `services' to women (or men), but that moment just doesn't come this is a film that is brutally real, and anything but glamorous.
The characters of Buck and Rizzo are complex without being heavy-handed, and their portrayal is inspired. At times the film turned pretty psychedelic, but it was a product of 1969, so it is forgivable. I found that it was impossible to turn away from the film, even for a minute because Schlesinger's pace and direction are absolutely compelling. This is certainly not a film to watch when you're trying to get a `pick me up', but it is an important one because it is a fine example of the realism that pervaded cinema in the late Sixties/early Seventies after the largely idealistic and/or melodramatic Fifties.
--Shelly
`Midnight Cowboy' was nothing like I expected. Generally, when you watch a movie where the plot is essentially a train wreck waiting to happen, there is a low point, a high point and then a REALLY low point. `Midnight Cowboy', the story of a cocksure and (briefly) idealistic and naïve hustler from Texas who moves to New York City to make his fortune doesn't have a high point. Indeed, I found myself actually wanting Joe Buck (Voight) and Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman) to have that brief moment where they actually succeed in promoting and selling Buck's `services' to women (or men), but that moment just doesn't come this is a film that is brutally real, and anything but glamorous.
The characters of Buck and Rizzo are complex without being heavy-handed, and their portrayal is inspired. At times the film turned pretty psychedelic, but it was a product of 1969, so it is forgivable. I found that it was impossible to turn away from the film, even for a minute because Schlesinger's pace and direction are absolutely compelling. This is certainly not a film to watch when you're trying to get a `pick me up', but it is an important one because it is a fine example of the realism that pervaded cinema in the late Sixties/early Seventies after the largely idealistic and/or melodramatic Fifties.
--Shelly