Inspired by Glenn Frankel’s acclaimed 2021 book “Shooting ‘Midnight Cowboy’: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation and the Making of a Dark Classic,” director Nancy Buirski (“By Sidney Lumet”) gives us ”Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy,” an illuminating examination of the only X-rated film to win an Academy award for Best Picture.
“Midnight Cowboy,” which was released in 1969 and broke records at Manhattan’s Coronet Theater, tells the shocking story of a young Texan who takes the name Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and comes to New York City to “make it” as a “hustler” (Yes, real midnight cowboys could be found on 42nd St. at the time). In this modern-day picaresque tale, Buck meets the thief, outcast and street person Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), who becomes his confidant, pimp and friend. Based on a 1965 novel by James Leo Herlihy, “Midnight Cowboy” crossed several boundaries, the most outrageous being the graphically suggestive depiction of a gay sex act. Jon Voight, a TV actor with theater experience, shot to stardom as Buck. Dustin Hoffman, a bantamweight, New York City-trained theater actor steeped in Method acting, coming off the hit “The Graduate,” (1967), dazzled as Ratso, immortalizing the line, “I’m walkin’ here,” and succeeding in making audiences sympathize with an often repugnant loser. Ratso was the polar opposite of Hoffman’s Ben Braddock of “The Graduate.”
“Midnight Cowboy” director John Schlesinger was a closeted, gay, Jewish man from England at a time when being gay was still a crime in the UK. Schlesinger was bullied as a child at boarding school, became a WW II veteran, a graduate of Oxford and director of documentary shorts for the BBC between 1958 and 1961.
His first feature was the “kitchen sink” drama “A Kind of Loving” (1962) with Alan Bates. Schlesinger followed that with the classic “Billy Liar” (1963) with Tom Courtenay in the title role. It was a British New Wave hit in which the title character imagines himself machine-gunning his own parents. It was truly Schlesinger’s first “zeitgeist film.” Schlesinger’s next effort, the Swinging London-eviscerating drama “Darling” (1965), resulted in an an Academy Award for lead Julie Christie.
“Midnight Cowboy,” Schlesinger’s first American film, was the product of a major studio (United Artists), if you can imagine such a thing in this age. Undoubtedly, UA studio head David Picker, who had green-lighted James Bond and “A Hard Day’s Night,” believed there was an audience for dark, controversial subject matter at a time when the U.S. was mired in Vietnam and young people burned draft cards (he was right). Former documentary filmmaker Schlesinger (“Terminus”) made New York City with its mix of glamour and grime, wealth and poverty and teeming diversity look stunningly real. “Midnight Cowboy” cast member Bob Balaban, Village Voice film critic James Hoberman, actor Jennifer Salt and historian Lucy Sante (“Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York”) all provide penetrating insights. The neo-realists of post-WWII, who shot in the ruins of Europe, showed Schlesinger the way.
We hear Hoffman talk about how he found Ratso’s “walk” on a New York City street. Voight speaks of “looking for my (Ingmar) Bergman.” Andy Warhol had been mining the same terrain with such films as “Flesh” (1968), which many designate “the real “Midnight Cowboy.”” Buirski notes that the gay watershed event, the Stonewall Riots, occurred in New York City in 1969, the year “Midnight Cowboy” was released. Schlesinger, producer Jerome Hellman and screenwriter Waldo Salt all earned Academy Awards. “The Legend of Midnight Cowboy” is steeped in the Grammy Award-winning Fred Neil/Harry Nilsson theme song “Everybody’s Talkin’.” They’re still talking.
(“Desperate Souls, Dark City: The Legend of ‘Midnight Cowboy’” contains adult themes and images)
Not Rated. At the Coolidge Corner. Grade: A-