Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential videoThe first, and only, X-rated film to win a best picture Academy Award, John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy seems a lot less daring today (and has been reclassified as an R), but remains a fascinating time capsule of late-1960s sexual decadence in mainstream American cinema. In a career-making performance, Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, a naive Texas dishwasher who goes to the big city (New York) to make his fortune as a sexual hustler.
Although enthusiastic about selling himself to rich ladies for stud services, he quickly finds it hard to make a living and eventually crashes in a seedy dump with a crippled petty thief named Ratzo Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman, doing one of his more effective "stupid acting tricks," with a limp and a high-pitch rasp of a voice). Schlesinger's quick-cut, semi-psychedelic style has dated severely, as has his ruthlessly cynical approach to almost everybody but the lead characters. But at its heart the movie is a sad tale of friendship between a couple of losers lost in the big city, and with an ending no studio would approve today. It's a bit like an urban Of Mice and Men, but where both guys are Lenny. --Jim Emerson
Product Details
- Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro
- Directors: John Schlesinger
- Writers: James Leo Herlihy, Waldo Salt
- Producers: Jerome Hellman, Kenneth Utt
- Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
- Language: French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
- Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
- Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
- Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Rating: R (Restricted)
- Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
- DVD Release Date: January 1, 2000
- Run Time: 113 minutes
