Midnight Cowboy moves beyond realism into an archetypal tale of the Big City destroying dreamers. Joe and Ratso, like Of Mice and Men's George and Lenny, are quintessential failed, lower-class, buddy-dreamers.
Midnight Cowboy
For those who have never seen it and those who have never forgotten it.
1969 · 1h 53m · R
Drama
Directed by
John Schlesinger
Overview
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
I cannot recall a more marvelous pair of acting performances in any one film.
Midnight Cowboy's peep-show vision of Manhattan lowlife may no longer be shocking, but what is shocking, in 1994, is to see a major studio film linger this lovingly on characters who have nothing to offer the audience but their own lost souls.
In this film the scenery is lovely and only the human race is vile.
The acting, showy and instinctual, is most of the movie; the visual style is too forced and chicly distended to let the drama acquire much natural life of its own.
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