Midnight Cowboy

Midnight Cowboy

D. John Schlesinger

This was Schlesinger?s first film in America. It stars John Voight as Joe Buck, a rather simple minded Texan who fancies his chances as a gigolo in the Big Apple. As he takes the bus to New York we get a taste of Schlesinger?s style of interlacing flashbacks and dreams as Joe dozes and day dreams of his Texas boyhood and youth. Once he gets to New York he soon finds that being a hustler is not quite as simple as he thought it would be, in fact when he asks his first ?client? for money after an hour in the sack she cons him out of $100.

Dustin Hoffman is Ratso Rizzo, a crippled, lowlife petty thief existing hand to mouth in New York and they first meet up when Ratso cons the simple Joe out of $20. In the ensuing hour or so they get to be buddies and sharing a squat in an abandoned building take the slide into the New York winter and desperation together.

Hoffman and Voight are superb and it is rather a pity that they missed Oscars for their performances although it would be hard to begrudge John Wayne his only Oscar.

This is a ?must see? film which shows little signs of aging except possibly in it?s Warholesque party scenes.