"Midnight Cowboy" (1969)

Rank on the AFI List: #43

WHAT I ALREADY KNEW ABOUT THE MOVIE:
Only 2 things, and they have nothing to do with the story:
1) It stars Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.
2) It has the famous line, "Hey!  I'm walking here!  I'm walking here!"

LET ME EXPLAIN...
So I went into this one having not read the synopsis, and I don't know which is better: not knowing what kind of trash you're about to watch, or knowing ahead of time that the story was going to be dirty.  I guess I prefer not knowing so I can at least give it a chance.

Why is "Midnight Cowboy" dirty?  For starters, it's about a Texan who moves to New York to become a male prostitute.  Second, this was originally an X-rated movie when it came out in 1969.  And on top of all that, I'm convinced the filmmakers had to be on drugs because a lot of the scenes were bizarre and trippy.  I hated this movie.

What makes this a "Top 100" Movie?
It dared to go where no movie had gone before in terms of sex, homosexuality, and male prostitution, and apparently its cinematography and editing were groundbreaking at the time.  Whatever.  It was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, winning 3 of them (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay), so apparently I really missed something.

Complaints Compliments:
Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman both did a great job in their roles, at least.

LET ME SUM UP...
The only thing that prevented me from giving this movie a 1/10 rating was the acting of Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.  Everything else made this horrible to sit through.

MY RATING: 2/10

TOTAL # OF FILMS WATCHED: 96

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You missed the point entirely if you didn't comprehend the purpose; the film was frank about existential singularity and loneliness in the vacuum of time.