Film Forum

(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 (Waldo Salt), among seven nominations. DCP. Approx. 114 min. 

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

“ACHINGLY ACCURATE. One of the first wide releases to capture the rot of the city in general and its once-glam Times Square district in particular.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire

“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