Midnight Cowboy 1969
Midnight Cowboy, directed by British filmmaker John Schlesinger, is a dark and heavy adult film with an ultra-realistic theme. The film tells the story of the strange friendship and tragic tale of two homeless, vagrant, and wandering anti-heroes, reminiscent of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men novel in a fairy-tale-like manner. When it was released, some viewers thought it was a cowboy movie. One of the film’s two heroes, a pure-blood Texan dishwasher who never takes off his fringed cowboy jacket, comes to ruthless New York with hopes of becoming a high-paid gigolo, while Midnight Cowboy also meant “male prostitute.” Midnight Cowboy is the first and only adult film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film, initially shown with adult film classification (X rating) due to daring scenes involving sex and drugs, was included in the general audience category when it re-entered theaters in the late 1970s. Midnight Cowboy won seven Academy Awards, including Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight), Best Supporting Actress (Supporting Sylvia Miles), and Best Editing (Hugh A. Robertson), and was nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (Waldo Salt: from James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel). The film is considered a typical example of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s with its sex and drug scenes, anti-totalitarian stance, and search for freedom.
