Review of Midnight Cowboy (1969) by Roland S — 10 Jun 2010

Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman deliver watershed performances in this dark urban drama from director John Schlesinger. Voight plays Joe Buck, a naive young Texan gigolo hoping to make it big in New York City, with a chameleonic Hoffman playing another of his legendary characterizations: Rico 'Ratso' Rizzo, a smarmy, opportunistic, con scraping a living on the harsh, unforgiving big city streets.

Buck's naive idealism slowly erodes as he attempts to make a living as a male prostitute, and encounters cynicism, thievery, opportunism and bad luck. With nowhere to live, he strikes up an odd friendship with Rizzo, played by Hoffman as a whiny opportunist who is as lost as Buck.

The two survive in an abandoned block of flats - freezing, starving and hoping to cut a big break. Schlesinger keeps the feel real, shooting his film in straightforward tones, allowing the story, its characters and their plight drive the film forward, both visually and thematically.

He does take a few impressionistic diversions, specially in depicting the high life, hedonism, pretension and soulless sexuality that exists in some city quarters. In essence, the film is a tragedy, its characters merely pawns in life's ironic game and its soundtrack a bittersweet epitaph.