It has been 55 years since the groundbreaking release of Midnight Cowboy, the X-rated Best Picture film directed by John Schlesinger, and starring the Oscar nominated Jon voight and Dustin Hoffman. Of course, since then, the X rating was officially retired as an MPAA rating, as it became associated with porn more than a trip to the cinema. the rating NC-17 was thought to be a more appropriate rating, but has since stigmatized certain movies, and prevented most from ever truly achieving wide release. but, back in 1969, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saw fit to name Midnight Cowboy the Best Picture of the year, thus cementing it as the only X-Rated film to ever do so.
But, in a day and age where Ana De Armas can break into the Oscar race through the NC-17 rated Blonde, is Midnight Cowboy still provocative? I’m not the right person to ask. The thing about modern film criticism, is that since the medium has been around for over 100 years, no one alive doing film criticism actually has the full depth of knowledge, and instead we have to go back and look through the archives of Hollywood. There are many films lost due to fires, poor preservation techniques, or some other reason, so we grasp at whaat we can. For me, being born in the 80’s, and really discovering film in the 90’s, it meant that everything before me I had to go back through. So, now that I’m a blind film critic, this is my first time through this. I’m not ashamed. I think most critics probably have a bucket list of films that include movies released before they were born, and some work harder than others to close that gap.
MGM Plus, if you use it as a channel add on to Prime, hosts audio description for Midnight Cowboy. I’m surprised it was human and not TTS, but for a Best Picture winner, the least we can do is spring for human audio description. Schlessinger’s work really explores a young country hustler (Voight) naively thinking that moving to the big city will increase his chances at earning money for turning tricks with women. He finds a world far removed from his own, and ends up falling prey to the depravity of a society in flux, and forced to trust a man (Hoffman) not truly worth trusting.
Did 1969 get everything right? From the queer perspective, I’ll say the representation here is not great. Then again, positive LGBTQ representation in 1969 is hard to come by. You would hope that a film with a gay director would present better representation, but, again, 1969. I know the generation below me hates hearing “it was a different time”, but it was. Despite this not being my favorite Best Picture winner, or something I’m excited to explore over and over, there’s a clear challenge to the norms of 1969 society in this. That is why it earned the X-Rating, despite the fact it certainly would be R rated today.
So, to push back on a film that was pushing back for its time, that was initially quite subversive, seems silly. Accept this as it is, warts and all. I’m not sure it was the best film in 1969, but I wasn’t alive then, and I’d need to watch comfortably far more movies than I’m likely to watch from that year to make such a bold statement. But, for film history, it certainly is a giant middle finger to the establishment that was looking to distance itself from the Hayes code, and find a new radical way of making film. For me, that’s enough.
Final Grade: A-