Midnight Cowboy [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: John Schlesinger John Schlesinger

Overview

Joe Buck (John Voight) is the naive Texas dishwasher who leaves his tiny town for a life as a male prostitute in New York City. He quits his job and gets on a northbound bus. The rural rube encounters the brassy Cass (Sylvia Miles) and believes he has his first paying customer, but the Jewish princess brings out the crying towel in mock humiliation. Joe ends up giving her money for cab fare as his experience foreshadows other demoralizing events. He meets local street hustler Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) who relieves Joe of some more cash and sends him to the demented religious fanatic O'Daniel (John McGiver). Joe is horrified to learn O'Daniel is not a pimp and flees his seedy apartment. Wandering the cold, lonely streets, Joe is amazed that a dead man on the sidewalk draws no attention or interest from the locals. He meets up with the conniving Ratso and threatens to kill him if he doesn't return the money. Ratso gives Joe a place to stay in a condemned apartment building where the two scrounge for survival as winter approaches. Joe is reduced to allowing himself to be used for homosexual sex and a young college student fails to pay for his services. Ratso and Joe attend a trendy, drug soaked Manhattan party where he meets the stoned Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro), who pays Joe double the asking price for his sexual services. Ratso is already a cripple who finds his health worsening with the arrival of winter. Joe returns Ratso's kindness by vowing to take the ailing petty thief to Miami. While Ratso dreams of sun, fun and bikini clad women, Joe encounters a simpering, middle-aged homosexual from Chicago in town for a convention. He asks the man for money but is far short of the amount needed for two-one way trips to Florida on the Greyhound bus. Joe knocks out the man's dentures and sticks telephone receiver down the man's throat. By now Ratso is convinced he will be preyed upon in the mean streets of New York if he doesn't get to warm weather soon. Midnight Cowboy won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best screenplay (Waldo Salt) and Best Director (John Schlesinger). Hoffman, Voight, and Miles were nominated for their performances. Fred Neil's song "Everybody's Talking" was a smash for Nillson. Warren Zevon wrote a song, and The Group and Elephant's Memory also contributed to the memorable soundtrack. The film was rated X at the time and it the only X rated feature to win the Academy Award.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/29/2018
UPC:	0715515215312
Original Release:	1969
Rating:	R
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Language:	English
Time:	1:53:00
Sales rank:	3,770

Special Features

New 4k Digital restoration, approved by Cinematographer Adam Holender, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Alternate 5.1 surround DTS0-HD Master Audio soundtrack; Audio Commentary from 1991 featuring Director John Schlesinger and Producer Jerome Hellman; New video essay with Commentary by Holender; New photo gallery with Commentary by Photographer Michael Childers; The Crowd Around the Cowboy, a 1969 short film made on location for Midnight Cowboy; Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter's Journey, an Academy Award-nominated documentary film from 1990 by Eugene Corr and Robert Hillmann; Two short documentaries from 2004 on the making and release of Midnight Cowboy; Interview with actor Jon Voight on The David Frost Show from 1970; Voight's original screen test; Interview from 2000 with Schlesinger for BAFTA Los Angeles; Excerpts from the 2002 BAFTA Los Angeles tribute to Schlesinger ; Trailer; Plus: An essay by critic Mark Harris

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Dustin Hoffman	Ratso Rizzo
Jon Voight	Joe Buck
John McGiver	O'Daniel
Brenda Vaccaro	Shirley
Ruth White	Sally Buck
Barnard Hughes	Towny
Sylvia Miles	Cass
Viva	Gretel
Jennifer Salt	Annie
Gil Rankin	Woodsy Niles,Woodsy Niles - Texas
Gary Owens	Little Joe
T. Tom Marlow	Little Joe
George Eppersen	Ralph
Al Scott	Cafeteria Manager
Linda Davis	Mother on Bus
J.T. Masters	Old Cowhand
Arlene Reeder	Old Lady
Georgann Johnson	Rich Lady
Jonathan Kramer	Jackie
Bob Balaban	Young Student
Anthony Holland	TV Bishop
Jan Tice	Freaked-Out Lady
Paul Benjamin	Bartender
Peter Scalia	Vegetable Grocer
Vito Siracusa	Vegetable Grocer
Peter Zamaglias	Hat-Shop Owner
Tina Scala	Laundromat Lady
Alma Felix	Laundromat Lady
Richard Clarke	Escort Service Man
Ann Thomas	Frantic Lady
Gastone Rossilli	Hansel McAlbertson
Joan Murphy	Waitress
Al Stetson	Bus Driver
Ultra Violet	Party Guest
Paul Jabara	Party Guest
International Velvet	Party Guest
William Door	Party Guest
Cecelia Lipson	Party Guest
Taylor Mead	Party Guest
Paul Morrissey	Party Guest
Paul Jasmin	Party Guest
George Epperson	Ralph
Arthur Anderson	Hotel Clerk
M. Walsh	Actor
John Barry	Composer

Technical Credits

Waldo Salt

James Leo Herlihy

John Schlesinger	Director
Waldo Salt	Screenwriter
Jerome Hellman	Producer
Dick Smith	Special Effects
Jack Fitzstephens	Sound Effects
Dick Vorisek	Sound Effects
James Leo Herlihy	Screenwriter
Vic Ramos	Casting

Editorial Reviews

After earning notoriety as one of the first major studio films to be given an X rating (it was later re-rated R), Midnight Cowboy made history as the first X-rated film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. A brutal depiction of broken dreams and lives asunder in the fetid backwash of the swinging Sixties, Cowboy shocked audiences with its squalid subject matter and signaled a trend towards films that explored lurid and personal material. Whereas the mere suggestion of a blow job in Cowboy was scandalous in 1969, the film helped pave the way for later mainstream films in which a blow job might have as much shock value as the weather forecast. For that reason, Cowboy loses a substantial part of its impact when viewed all these years after its original release. That said, as a buddy film and as an ode to the impossibility of liberation from reality, the film retains a certain timelessness. Jon Voight's handsome but stupid Joe Buck and Dustin Hoffman's desperate, verminous Ratso Rizzo remain iconic figures, symbolic of the resigned, bitter ending of a decade built on the tenets of liberation, progressive change, and the promise of collective struggle. The fate of Buck and Rizzo suggests that such liberation is illusory, and that human relations, no matter how tender they ultimately may be, are part of a quiet, desperate bid for acceptance and belonging.

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