MYST # 4: Midnight Cowboy

  

A combination of Americana counterculture and New-wave French cinema are apparent in the John Schlesinger drama Midnight Cowboy, starring  Jon Voight as Joe Buck, a naive hustler looking for wealthy women to pay him for his "duties", and a completely unfamiliar Dustin Hoffman as Enrico 'Ratso' Rico, a New York City conman with less than consistent health. This, and uncomfortable fast-forwarding of sex scenes to relieve any and all awkward conversation with my father, who was watching this with me, did not disappoint in Midnight Cowboy.

Intimate camera work combined with a Kodachrome-esque execution brought this X-rated film from the supposed pornography cinema into an three-time Oscar-winning piece of work. Winner for the prestige Best Picture, the tracking shots and intimate close-ups of Joe highlight his loneliness and longing for his past, shown in the scene where Bible thumper Mr. O'Daniel (John McGiver) pushes prayer onto him in a in not-so-seemingly hopeful career in Joe's craft: sex.

Large influence from French New-wave cinema were not only seen in this film, but most arthouse-y films of this time. Dustin Hoffman recent appearance in Mike Nichols' The Graduate just two years before made a splash with large audiences at the time for its interesting camera-work and surrealistic scenes, like the awkwardness that ensued after Benjamin puts on a scuba-diving outfit bought by his parents for his birthday, as Benjamin is seen alone underwater, accepting the loss of control for his future. Much of cinema at this time had the same loss of "American identity" style of thematic element, Midnight Cowboy being no different.

The surreal and drug-infused scene where Joe and Ratso attend a Warhol-like party implement this loss of classic American identity a myriad of films dictated in the 1960s-70s, as proposed by The Artifice magazine. Sitting alone are the Cowboy himself, his ridiculous outfit a symbol for the outlandish old American values, and the scuzzy Ratso, New York City's own sleazy sub-counterculture of condescending morals, where money and self-fulfillment are the only vices. They're approached by an even more different culture, artsy and drug-fueled Warhol-wannabes, exemplifying the current culture of the creative minds, filmmakers, artists, and their drug-experimenting followers. This culture invites  the American and Sleaze-ball to a "creative-mind" party.

At this party, drugs and sex run rampant, and this is highlighted by the surrealistic and New-wave influenced camera, with discontinuity editing and countless amounts of parallel action to display the many encounters of each culture at this party. Joe is drugged at this party, after smoking a joint (what he thought was a cigarette) and taking an "upper" from a party-goer. The juxtaposition of past-American culture and present-counterculture entailed in this movie give insight to how both counter- and classic-culture view each other, both accepting and skeptical.

Aside from the copious amount of sex scenes endeared while watching this movie with my father, a person conscious of American counterculture at this time period will see it's obvious theme in this movie, making it an obvious hit. An X-rating should not dismay any viewer interested in this culture, but be weary of who's watching this with you. I wasn't, and I do regret that.

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