The Shattered Dreams of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo
Midnight Cowboy represents an historical landmark in a number of ways. The most significant is its depiction of the street life of New York City, with its homeless, prostitution and homosexuality. The film dared to depict these elements in ways never as brutally frank in previous Hollywood pictures. In 1969, this film was considered scandalous enough to warrant an X rating from the MPAA. Yet it also managed to win three Oscars, including Best Picture. At the time, the X rating was not nearly as harmful for a film`s success, and the film itself was both daring and good enough for the Academy to take notice.
Viewing this film in our more permissive times is very illuminating. The content is fairly mild; with a few cuts, Midnight Cowboy would be a PG-13 today. The nudity is fairly naturalistic, as opposed to erotic, and is certainly not exploitive. The f-word, uttered so much in today`s films, is not used even once. The X rating at the time was not due so much to the extremity of the content, but to the actual subject itself, which was never discussed truthfully before.
The story is well-known. Joe Buck, played by Jon Voight, dreams of leaving his small-town life for the glamour of New York. For him, success involves being a hustler, who will get lots of money for satisfying many rich women. Once he reaches NYC, however, reality sets in, and he falls into poverty and male prostitution, including a scene where he is serviced by a teenaged boy at a movie theatre. Buck finds himself with an individual even more pathetic than himself, Ratzo Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a dirty, ill, amoral con-man who attempts to teach him the rules of living with barely nothing.
The acting is the highest virtue of the picture. Joe Buck`s character is interesting due to the fact that he is not very bright. He is a male bimbo, with an accent to match, and with occasional bouts of foolish talk, his attempt at impressing people: ("I ain`t a ferreal cowboy, but I`m sure am one hell of a stud!!") Yet Jon Voight creates a lot of sympathy and reality to this guy. We know that his view of the world, and his hopes for the future, are totally fantastical and misguided; we know that only a naive fool would expect to walk into NYC and be able to sleep with rich women for cash, but we believe in him all the same. Voight is able to take us with him, through his anticipation and, eventually, his disappointments.
Latest Articles