What a difference a year makes. After handing out its top accolade
to Oliver, the first G-rated film to receive the distinction, the award swung
to the opposite end of the ratings spectrum, landing in the hands of Midnight
Cowboy, the first, and only, X-rated film to win Best Picture. (It has since
been downgraded to an R rating, by the way). I guess chalk up this complete
reversal of tastes to the fact that it was the swinging sixties baby and things
had a way of turning on a dime.
Up front, I have to say, I wasn’t over the moon for Midnight
Cowboy. It has some undeniable charisma; a louche style, giving it a certain
type of depressing appeal. But by the time the credits rolled, I felt like I
had watched a talented athlete only just near the mark of their potential.
Actually, it felt more like watching a talented athlete inexplicably sabotage
their own talent just enough for them to stumble and not elevate to something more
exceptional. Midnight Cowboy is that athlete. It’s good, to anyone paying close
attention, but it’s obvious there is something better inside that never manages
to break free; that’s being held back. I can’t quite put my finger on what that
something better is, exactly. If I had to attempt to articulate it, I would say
that Midnight Cowboy is slightly episodic; it falls in and out of these sleazy
situations, which never quite stitch together. They’re distractions. As a
result, the film meanders away from what should have been developed: the tragic
friendship between Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo. Their failures, their loneliness,
their pain gives the film its emotional muscle. Unfortunately for the viewer,
it isn’t exercised enough.
Directed by John Schlesinger, Midnight Cowboy stars Jon
Voight and Dustin Hoffman, who were still writing the early chapters of their careers
upon the film’s release. Overall, the film lassoed seven nominations,
eventually roping in three wins, including the Oscar steer for Best Picture.
Schlesinger also took home the golden guy for Best Director, the zenith of a
resume home to an eclectic list of films, which unfortunately included the
Madonna crapfest The Next Best Thing. Apart from acting nods for both Voight
and Hoffman, Sylvia Miles also snagged a nod as an aging call girl for one of
the shortest performances ever to be recognized, clocking in at around five
minutes. And about three of those minutes of her performance are spent changing
channels on a television set with her backside. Inexplicably, the film’s theme
song “Everybody’s Talkin’” apparently didn’t live up to Academy standards, as
it was passed over in the nomination leg of the race, despite the fact that it
went on to win a Grammy award, when winning a Grammy award actually mattered. As
mentioned earlier, Midnight Cowboy’s biggest trivia claim to fame is that it
became the first and only X-rated film to garner the Academy’s top honor,
making it also likely to be the last film ever to do so, as the X-rating no
longer exists.
Midnight Cowboy follows the ambitions of Joe Buck, a
small-town Texas dishwasher with dreams of striking it rich in the Big Apple as
a hayseed hustler, wooing rich, older women into keeping him. With more
wide-eyed naiveté in his countenance than Pinocchio, Joe dresses up in cowboy
shtick and buys a one-way ticket east. New York quickly exposes Joe’s lack of
street smarts, rapidly draining his pockets and spitting him out on the streets
with only his cowboy hat and fringe suede jacket. He eventually finds refuge in
a condemned building with Enrico Salvatore “Ratso” Rizzo, a seedy, crippled
conman who had previously hustled Joe out of 20 clams.
After resolving their differences, the two form an unlikely
bond, slightly reminiscent of George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men, only
somewhat in reverse with the larger, goofier Joe taking care of the more
streetwise Ratso. The two stumble through a random series of encounters,
including a trippy Warhol-esque party, which ultimately leads them nowhere
financially. As Ratso’s health begins to rapidly deteriorate in the cold, New
York winter, he begs Joe to take him to Florida to fulfill his conman fantasies
of working over the population of bored retirees with nothing but disposable
cash. In a desperate attempt to raise the funds to finance the journey south,
Joe picks up an older man from a gay bar, robbing him of his cash to finance
the purchase of two bus tickets. En route to the Sunshine state, Ratso succumbs
to his frailties and dies an insignificant death in the arms of Joe.
Both Voight and Hoffman are crisp in the leading roles.
Their physical disparities cut such an iconic image as they stroll about the
dirty streets of New York side by side. Their slumped silhouettes visualize the
effects that take hold of men when luck has been a stranger for too long. The
friendship that is borne out of their loneliness and desperation feels
unexpected, but natural, which I think speaks to the wonderful
chemistry that Voight and Hoffman were able to find with each other. In fact, I
would lay the majority of the credit for the film’s success at their feet.
Their performances made the material far better than it existed on paper, which really heightened this sense that much of the film’s potential remained
caged.
I say this because Voight and Hoffman created this complex
and tragically fascinating friendship; a pairing which felt like it resided
outside of the hourglass, as though it existed on some timeless, classic plane.
Yet the film continually lowers them in and out of these random, time-sensitive
situations, like the swinging Warhol party, that anchor the story down in its
era. Instead of seeming like an enduring portrait of damaged souls struggling
to achieve urban survival, it feels mostly like a cultural snapshot of two guys
coping with the hard knocks of New York City. For some shortsighted reason, the
story keeps veering off into this territory where the dramatic air is much thinner.
But almost by some sheer force of resistance, the magnetic performances of
Hoffman and Voight attempt to overpower this mistake, and steer the film’s
focus away from the distractions of 1960s New York. But unfortunately, the
consequence of this push and pull is that the film feels like an uneven
experience.
Where this back and forth is most glaringly felt is during a
series of short flashbacks of Joe’s childhood. We learn that as a tyke, Joe’s
grandmother raised him after his mother abandoned him. However, his
grandmother’s vibrant sexuality attaches these flashback scenes with all kinds
of open-ended interpretations that would have no doubt delighted Freud. But
instead of being compelling or useful by way of character development, they
come off as expository noise. The irony is that they don’t even feel necessary
to understanding the character of Joe Buck. In a way, Jon Voight’s face has a
way of communicating volumes about Joe that none of these flashback scenes were
capable of achieving. I think therein lies the main problem with Midnight
Cowboy: The story needed to be told with a greater sense of simplicity, instead
of adding various soap opera elements that feel like a shorthanded attempt to
make it a more “serious” project. I think a little more faith in its characters
and a better understanding of the story would have unleashed the film’s inner
masterpiece out.
Favorite Line: Of
course the best line from Midnight Cowboy is the iconic line shouted by Dustin
Hoffman when Joe and Ratso and crossing the street, with the latter almost
meeting the front end of a taxi cab that comes to a screeching halt. In
response, Ratso slams his hand down on the hood, shouting, “I’m walking here!
I’m walking here!”
