Film Forum

Directed by John Schlesinger
Starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight

(1969) “Everybody’s talkin” at cowboy-geared, straight-from-the-sticks stud wannabe Jon Voight, while seedy tenement squatter Dustin Hoffman is “walkin’ here” as he storms at a pushy cabdriver; but they form their own alliance within the grubby underside of Times Square. Oscars® for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay (by Waldo Salt, based on Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel), among seven nominations. Whether you’ve seen the film before or not — it’s a revelation for Schlesinger’s no-holds-barred visualization of the demi-monde that was late ‘60s NYC and the knockout performances by Hoffman and Voight, ably supported by Brenda Vaccaro, Sylvia Miles, Bob Balaban, and Viva. 4K DCP restoration.

113 MIN.     USA     PARK CIRCUS

Reviews

“AN UNFORGETTABLE LOWLIFE RHAPSODY.”
– Benedict Cosgrove, Gothamist

“Nuanced, realistic and provocative without being crude and obscure. Popular without being frivolous… took New York’s good, bad, and ugly and presented it all without pretext. Of all the films made in and about New York City to this point, MIDNIGHT COWBOY best captures the chaotic and manifold audio-visual essence of the setting’s disorder.”
– Jeremy Carr, mubi

“Neither Voight nor Hoffman has ever been better on screen than they are here.”
– Chicago Tribune

“MIDNIGHT COWBOY’S peep-show vision of Manhattan lowlife may no longer be shocking, but what is shocking is to see a major studio film linger this lovingly on characters who have nothing to offer the audience but their own lost souls.”
– Owen Gleiberman

“It is a tribute to [Voight and Hoffman] that Ratso and Joe Buck emerge so unforgettably drawn… Joe and Ratso rise above the material, taking on a reality of their own.”
– Roger Ebert

“Today, MIDNIGHT COWBOY provides a spellbinding glimpse — etched in acid — of how we lived then that bears comparison to the work of great documentary still photographers, such as Weegee, or to the lurid excesses of tabloid filmmakers, such as Sam Fuller, or to the hallucinatory sensibilities of a Fellini.”
– Vanity Fair

“A slick, brutal (but not brutalizing) movie version of James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel… Dustin Hoffman, as Ratso (his first movie performance since THE GRADUATE), is something found under an old door in a vacant lot. With his hair matted back, his ears sticking out and his runty walk, Hoffman looks like a sly, defeated rat and talks with a voice that might have been created by Mel Blanc for a despondent Bugs Bunny. Jon Voight is equally fine as Joe Buck, a tall, handsome young man whose open face somehow manages to register the fuzziest of conflicting emotions within a very dim mind… MIDNIGHT COWBOY is so rough and vivid that it’s almost unbearable… Schlesinger has given his leads superb support with character actors like Ruth White (Sally Buck); John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes and Sylvia Miles.
Miss Miles is especially good…”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times