Midnight Cowboy (1969) A Manhattan "Peepshow" Neo Noir

"The Naked-er City circa              1968" (Noirsville)

Directed by John Schlesinger (Darling, Far from the Madding Crowd, Day of the Locust, The Marithon Man)

Written by Waldo Salt and based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy. Cinematography was by Adam Holender. Music was by John Barry.

The film stars Dustin Hoffman as "Ratso" or Enrico Salvatore "Rico" Rizzo, Jon Voight as Joe Buck, Sylvia Miles as Cass, John McGiver as Mr. O'Daniel, Brenda Vaccaro as Shirley, Barnard Hughes as Towny, Ruth White as Sally Buck, Jennifer Salt as Annie, Gilman Rankin as Woodsy Niles, Georgann Johnson as Rich Lady, Anthony Holland as TV Bishop, Bob Balaban as Young Student, Viva as Gretel McAlbertson, the Warhol-like The Factory party/happening giver, Paul Rossilli (aka Gastone Rossilli) as Hansel McAlbertson, The Factory party/happening filmmaker, Craig Carrington as Charlie Dealer'

Newbie Heads -Up! The term "Film's Noir" was actually coined in the mid 1930's by French rightwing and religious publications. Any film that depicted crimes that went against the laws of the state, or that had stories that included excessive violence, sex, and other taboo subjects, and displayed unredeemed characters of "low morals" in anything resembling favorable light were not banned in France (unlike here in the U.S. by the Legion of Decency and the MPPC) they were only condemned as Films Noir. 

Charles O’Brien researched the use of “film noir” before the war in Film Noir In France: Before The Liberation. There is also a similar research article with the same findings done by the Sorbonne in Paris.

William Ahern in his "The Death Of Film Noir" sheds light on O'Brien's findings. (Ahern's full piece here)

After describing the original origin of the "coinage" of the term Films Noir he goes more into details. I've bolded in red some relevant ones.

"There are nine film noirs identified in O’Briens essay: Pierre Chenal’s “Crime and Punishment” (1935), Jean Renoir’s “The Lower Depths” (Les Bas-fonds) (1936), Julien Duvivier’s “Pépé le Moko” (1937), Jeff Musso’s “The Puritan” (1938), Marcel Carné’s “Port of Shadows” (Le Quai des brumes) (1938), Jean Renoir’s “La Bête Humaine” (1938), Marcel Carné’s “Hôtel du Nord” (1938), Marcel Carné’s “Le Jour se lève” (Daybreak) 1939, and Pierre Chenal’s “Le Dernier Tournant” (1939).

Five of the films are of the poetic realism movement (although as with anything else that could be debated): “The Lower Depths,” “Pépé le Moko,” Port of Shadows,” “La Bête Humaine” and “Le Jour se lève.” The other four films contain similar themes. In three of the films the protagonist commits suicide and suicide plays a role in two other films. In three of the films the protagonist is incarcerated or executed by the state. In one film the protagonist is killed senselessly. Three films have wives conspiring with lovers to kill husbands. In two films the protagonist survives with a lover although what follows that survival isn’t clear and in one film one lover is shot in a botched suicide pact. What also isn’t clear is whether there are more films called “noirs” that will show up with subsequent research and whether similar and earlier films made before the term “film noir” first hit ink are also film noirs.

The film noirs considered part of the poetic realism movement have a visual style that would influence the American crime film made both during and after the war with “Port of Shadows” being the most obvious example, the other films are made in different styles. The remaining films – “Hôtel du Nord” and “Le Dernier Tournant” – are filmed in a more conventional style although the content contains murder or suicide and the other social taboos that are a mainstay of the film noirs.*

None of these films are about private detectives hard-boiled or otherwise and none of them are police procedurals or stories where the police – or any member of governmental society – are seen as heroic. The films are about the working class and those below the working class or, in a few films, what was once referred to as the Lumpenproletariat. In fact, there isn’t a single crime film – as that term is conventionally used – in the list. “Pépé Le Moko,” a film that centers on a fugitive criminal hiding in the Casbah of Algiers, is a film about memory and desire more than anything else and its suicide ending has to do with facing what the character believes he has lost and not the possibility of incarceration." 

(William Ahern)  * which implies that a films subject matter if decadent enough was enough to tip it Noir. 

Midnight Cowboy is certainly about folks who Ahern tells us used to be known as the "Lumpenproletariat," those way below the working class, drifters, bums, sneak thieves, doing everything and anything to survive, and barely hanging on to boot. 

This is also a film where I'm reminded once again of the validity of Jo Gabriel's quote: 

"FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE  50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In (thelastdrivein.com)

The only difference here is that it was a major production. 

"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."  (Owen Gleiberman, Midnight Cowboy, Entertainment weekly. (March 4, 1994))

Story

Big Spring. Texas. U.S.A. The opening is the familiar sounds of a Western against white. We pull back to see a border, it's a silver screen. As we pull pack it's desolate daylight at the Big Tex Drive In theater.

Below the screen a small boy is rocking wildly on a squeaky iron rocking horse in a playground that's set there quite strategically. Mom can watch the film and keep track of the kids at the same time. 

I can relate. As a kid in the 1950s early 60s there were lots of Westerns on TV, and of course in the city one of the games us neighborhood kids played was Cowboys and Indians in our imaginations. Here though the visual signals read a kid with no companions.

We start hearing Joe Buck singing "yipee-tie-yay-eee get a long little doggies..." 

We cut to a puke yellow and intestine green shower stall in The Big Spring Motel. Two naked feet are  punctuated by a dropped bar of soap. Joe stoops to pick it up and gives the ladies a nice beefcake side view. Equal exposure in a Noir from the Age of Aquarius.

Joe continues his washing and singing the shower, the scene segues into a low angle Joe standing bare-chested before his mirror dabbing on deodorant and then, reaching down to take a black, curled at the sides, pre-shaped cowboy hat out of a hat box. It's sort of in a Steve McQueen - Wanted Dead or Alive style shape. 

John Voigt as Joe Buck

He's slipping into his new Sears or Monkey Wards  mail ordered catalogue cowboy threads. Its in a montage that also is the opening credits sequence.

A wild west show style green, horseshoe and star embroidered smiley pocket, pearl snap shirt. Cowman boot cut pants with flaps on the back pockets and a new pair of cowpuncher boots with gold starburst inlays. 

He finally slips on his brown suede fringed buckskin jacket, this sequence is intercut with interior shots of Miller's Restaurant, dining room, kitchen, order window, all with various restaurant personnel calling, "Where is Joe Buck?"

George Eppersen as Ralph

Al Scott as manager

We cut back to see Joe walking down the gravel drive of the stucco walled the Big Spring Motel. He's got a portable radio and cowhide suitcase in hand. We following him on his route through town and into Miller's. 

The stucco Big Spring "residence" Motel

This sequence fills us in on more flashbacks of Joes backstory as he passes his grandmother's closed and "for rent" beauty parlor. It seems that she passed away while he was in the service. These montages are Schlesinger's stylistic way of moving the story along at a brisk pace but also foreshadows the curves ahead and the psychological baggage he's carrying besides what he's got in his cowhide suitcase. 

When he walks into Miller's kitchen the manager asks him "why you got on that get up?" and then orders him to get an apron on. 

Joe goes over to his dishwasher buddy Ralph and tells him he's quitting and going to New York City to basically stud himself out to rich New York women who don't know what a real man is like.

Ralph - Texas: What are you gonna do back East?

Joe Buck: Lot of rich women back there, Ralph, beggin' for it. Payin' for it too.

Ralph - Texas: Yeah?

Joe Buck: Yeah. Hell, yeah. An the men, they're mostly tutti-fruttis.

Ralph - Texas: Oh, I'll bet you it's a mess back there.

Joe Buck: So, I'm gonna cash in on some of that, right!

Ralph - Texas: I don't know. I don't know nothin' about it.

Joe Buck: Hell! What do I got to stay around here for? I got places to go, right!

We never find out where he got these notions. The film does depict Joe with a Paul Newman poster from 1961's Hud on his hotel flops wall, implying that maybe his inspiration was Newman's Hud.  A cowboy / playboy / townie stud. (I'm sure the novel delves into it, but from reading the synopsis it differs a bit on some story lines). 

Joe says goodbye to apparently, his only friend. He tells Ralph he's there to pick up the wages owed him and that he's catching the bus today and basically "gettin' the hell outa Dodge rollin' East on I-20., for New York City." 

A Grandma (Ruth White as Sally Buck) Flashback...

...triggered by Grandma's beauty shop for rent

We watch as Joe hops the bus East.

Here on the bus, we get another montage, this one of an Interstate crossing the West Texas "Llano Estacado," a topography of semi-arid prairies full of tumbleweeds, cacti and mesquite, along with barbed wire fenced grazing lands and a right-of-way festooned with oil well bill boards and Jesus Saves signs painted on the roofs of dilapidated shacks. 

We also get interspersed vignettes of Joe and his radio not only interacting with various passengers that occupy the seats around him, a mother and daughter, an old woman, and old cowboy, but these vignettes intern trigger more flashbacks of his past, of the day his mother and her girl friend dropping him off to live with his fun loving, rowdy, beauty parlor owning grandmother, and her rodeo circuit boyfriend with benefits. So Joe basically had no real father figure, and we never find out what became of his mother.

We also see a spray painted graffiti sign on a towns water tower reading  "Crazy Annie loves Joe Buck" that gets Joe reflecting for the first time on his disastrous affair in another flashback with nymphomaniac Crazy Annie, aka the "town pump" which as the film progresses we see revealed in various bits and pieces a bit traumatic to say the least. 

Reflecting on Annie

Jennifer Salt as Crazy Annie

He eventually falls asleep and wakes up on the far East side of the Mississippi traveling now with a bunch of drunken legionnaires who sing their way onto the New Jersey Turnpike. Joe is sitting next to a nun while the landscape through the windows is now high voltage transmission lines, swamps, concrete and steel overpasses and tank farms. Joe turns his radio dial and gets all ecstatic when he tunes in a New York radio station. Shazam!

Joe, your classic fish out of water hick, checks into the Claridge Hotel a Times Square flop.  With the  . Claridge as his base, he begins his quest as a stud for hire, exclusively for rich New York socialites. His  modus operandi is to walk around Manhattan checking out likely prospects and somewhat stalking these women that take his fancy. 

His opening line is to ask directions to the Statue Of Liberty. 

He finally scores a hit on East 72nd Street with a platinum blonde named Cass walking her poodle. 

Sylvia Miles as Cass

Joe Buck: I'm brand, spankin' new in this here town and I was hopin' to get a look at the Statue of Liberty.

Cass: It's up in Central Park, taking a leak. If you hurry, you can catch the supper show.

But, Cass actually likes what she sees, and tells her doorman that Joe is coming in to pick up something in her apartment. 

Up in her apartment Cass gets a call from Maury about a date for later that night, so here, we get a humorous sequence. She is juggling the phone with Maury, while at the same time undressing Joe, and herself. 

They have some afternoon delight and afterwards when Joe brings up business. Tells her he's a hustler. Cass replies something on the order of yes, you gotta hustle in this town. Meanwhile she looks in her purse pulls out her change purse and announces that she forgot to get to the bank and asks Joe if he could lend her some money for the bus.   

Joe Buck: You know, Cass, that's a funny thing you mentioning money - 'cause I was just about to ask you for some.

Cass: You were gonna ask me for money? Huh?

Joe Buck: Well, hell, why do you think I come all the way up here from Texas for?

Cass: You were gonna ask me for money. Who the hell do you think you're dealing with? Some old slut on 42nd Street? In case you didn't happen to notice it - you big Texas longhorn bull - I'm one hell of a gorgeous chick!

Cass does a teary outrage bit real good and Joe breaks down telling her he was just joshing her and opens up his wallet asking her how much she wants "a ten?" Cass pulls out a twenty.

We get a nice high angle shot of Joe as he emerges from the Apartment house that emphasizes the enormity of Joe's pathetically futile quest. 

We next see Joe sitting in a dark cocktail bar licking his wounds by getting drunk. He's sitting nest to Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo a louche, lounge lizard with greasy hair wearing a white suit and a red polo shirt. Ratso slightly sloshed, leans into Joe commenting on the embroidered birds decorating his snap button western cut shirt. This gets Joe's attention. 

Joe pulls out a pack of cigarettes, to light one up. At about this time Jackie, a gay man acting effeminate  enough to fool Joe leans in between them asks Joe for a smoke. Joe says something along the lines of sure darling and offers the pack but Enrico reaches out grabs a smoke for himself and clues Joe in that the guy is gay.

Joe offers his hand for a shake. Jackie calls Enrico "Ratzo." It's the first time we hear his nickname, this is played with humorously throughout the film in almost The Odd Couple style between Ratso and Joe.

Joe Buck: I'm Joe Buck from Texas.

Ratso Rizzo: Enrico Rizzo, from the Bronx.

Joe Buck: And I'm gonna buy you a drink. What the hell you think of that?

Ratso Rizzo: Well, I don't mind if I do.

They move to a booth.

So basically Joe fills Enrico in about his coming to NYC story and then about scoring with Cass finishing with...

Joe Buck: Damn, I know when I give satisfaction. I give her satisfaction. I mean, you see what I'm getting at here? She got a penthouse up there, with a color TV and more goddamn diamonds than the archbishop, and she bust out bawlin' when I asked her for money.

Ratso Rizzo: For what?

Joe Buck: For money.

Ratso Rizzo: Wait a minute, for money for what?

Joe Buck: Hell, I'm a hustler. You didn't know that?

Ratso Rizzo: Well how am I supposed to know that? I mean, you gotta tell a person these things.

Joe Buck: I'm a hustler!

Ratso Rizzo: [sharply shushes Joe] All right, yeah, you're a hustler. But I mean, you're pickin' up trade on the street like that. That's nowhere. I mean, you gotta get yourself some kinda management.

Joe Buck: I think you put your finger on it.

So Ratso, being your typical friendly New Yorker, tells Joe (as if he had $$$ signs floating over his head) that he knows just who he needs for a manager, a guy named O'Daniel. 

Dustin Hoffman as Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo

O'Daniel, Ratso explains, runs a call girl operation and a stud service. They are now out of the cocktail bar and walking in the direction of the corner of 5th Ave. and 59th St., we get the one of Neo Noir's classic iconic lines...

A cab turning the corner stops short almost hitting Ratso as he and Joe are crossing an avenue. Ratso slams his fist on the hood and screams at the cabbie.

Ratso Rizzo: I'm walking here! I'm walking here!

The cabbie flips him off, Ratzo gives him the Italian up yours.

We cut to Ratso and Joe are at phone booths at the South east corner of Central Park. 

Ratzo is systematically clicking their coin returns while he's carrying on his spiel about O'Daniel, dangling bait and Joe is, like a fish, going for it.

So, Ratso drops a dime and calls O'Daniel's number and tell him he's got a hot prospect. O'Daniel tells Ratso to bring him up. He gives Ratso the hotel and room number 901. 

Ratso, after hanging up, then asks Joe for ten for his services and reminding him that he did him a favor and drug his bum ankle all the way out to the booth to do it. Joe hands him a ten. 

We cut to the hotel elevator with Ratso giving Joe a pep talk like a coach. They get to the 9th floor. Joe and Ratso step out. 

Ratso tells the operator to hold the elevator. He asks Joe for another ten for the cab fair back. Joe gives him another ten but before Ratso can do anything the door closes so he starts to get anxious. He pushes the elevator button, and reminds Joe to remember what he told him. Joe walks down to hall looking for 901. 

We cut to Ratso getting hurriedly into the elevator, to Joe knocking on the door of 901, and instead of  what you picture the manager of call girl operation would look like, this bald, unshaven, crazed looking old man, wearing a bathrobe opens the door to Noirsville. 

John McGiver as Mr. O'Daniel

Mr. O'Daniel: Cowboy, huh?

Joe Buck: Well, sir, I ain't a for real cowboy, but I am one hell of a stud!

[chuckles]

Mr. O'Daniel: Take it easy, boy. Seems to me you're different from most of the boys that come to me. Most of those boys are troubled and confused. I'd say you know exactly what you want.

Joe Buck: Oh you bet I do, sir.

Mr. O'Daniel: Yeah. But I bet you got one thing in common with those other boys. I bet you are lonesome.

Joe Buck: Well, not too. Uh.. I mean, a little.

"Well, not too. Uh.. I mean, a little."

Mr. O'Daniel: Yeah. Lonesome! I'm lonesome, so I'm a drunk. I'm lonesome, so I'm a dope fiend.

Woman - Mr. O'Daniel's Neighbor: Oh, shut up!

Mr. O'Daniel: I'm lonesome, so I'm a thief. I'm lonesome, so I'm a fornicator, a whoremonger!

Woman - Mr. O'Daniel's Neighbor: [pounds on wall] You phony!

Mr. O'Daniel: Poop, I say, poop! I've heard it all. I've heard it all and I'm sick of it. Sick to death!

Joe Buck: Yes, sir, I can see that!

Mr. O'Daniel: Lonesomeness. Lonesomeness is something you take, you hear? Damn it, you take it and you go right on with your work. That's all there is to it.

Joe Buck: I'm rarin' to go, sir!

Mr. O'Daniel: Yes, I believe you are. Cowboy, eh?

Joe Buck: Yes, sir.

Mr. O'Daniel: Yeah. Ready for some hard work, son?

Joe Buck: I'm ready for anything!

Mr. O'Daniel: Yeah, I reckon, it's gonna be a lot easier for you, Joe Buck, than for most others.

Joe Buck: It's gonna be like money from home, sir!

Mr. O'Daniel: Money from home! There's your strength son, see? You've got the way of putting things earthy so that anybody can understand them. I warn you, Joe Buck. I'm gonna use you. I'm gonna run you ragged!

Joe Buck: [whooping]

Mr. O'Daniel: Ahh! You're wonderful, boy. You and me, we're gonna have fun together. It don't have to be joyless!

Joe Buck: Hell no, it don't have to be.

Mr. O'Daniel: Say, why don't you and me get right down on our knees right now? How's that strike you?

Joe Buck: Where?

Mr. O'Daniel: Right here! Here! Here!

[opens bathroom door, exposing a light-up Jesus statue, which he turns on]

Mr. O'Daniel: Right now! Why not? Why not? I've prayed on the streets. I've prayed in the saloons. I've prayed in the toilets. It don't matter where, so long as He gets that prayer!

Joe Buck:  [in over his head] Shit!

Mr. O'Daniel: Ah, that's the ticket, boy! Just open your heart and let it flow, wash over! As long as you get that love behind him, don't be frightened, son.

Preacher - Texas: [in flashback] I baptize thee, my brother, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Mr. O'Daniel: Don't run from Jesus. Pray and you shall be heard!

[Joe frantically exits the apartment and runs away]

Mr. O'Daniel: Don't be frightened, son! Don't! Don't run from Jesus!

Here we have a stylistic flashbacks intercut with real time Joe looking all around Manhattan to find Ratso. We a sort of religious slant on his one, were we see a preacher probably Southern Baptist, young Joe standing in the river getting baptized in a Texas river, Joe searching the subways for getting what he thinks are fleeting glimpses of Ratso, then back to his grandmother singing in a choir, etc., etc.

At the end of this montage Joe is back at the bar where he first ran into Ratso. Nobody's seen him. This leads again to another montage where we see cuts of Joe in his hotel room and his obsessed days and nights trying to hustle women by just parading around Times Square with his radio to his ear. But more and more he's noticing that the other ?cowboys" hanging around Times Square are not real cowpunchers. This all culminates in Joe getting locked out of his room. So he's stuck with the clothes he's wearing in a New York that is increasingly spinning into winter, with dwindling funds. We pick Joe up in some type of cafeteria where you get a tray and you slide it along a food counter and pick the dishes that strike your fancy. 

He sits at a booth with a mother and child. The woman is playing with either a rubber mouse .or a supposedly a real one pulling it through her hair. She's probably high on something. If you are a native New Yorker you learn almost instinctively as a kid to don't make eye contact with nutjobs. 

Joe who doesn't have much money apparently  s making himself some sort of cream of tomato soup made out of hot water, cream from the little glass milk bottles they used to have before plastics, and ketchup. yum. He has to make eye contact with the mouse woman to ask if he could have her saltine crackers. 

The whole diner episode ends where we watch Joe spill ketchup on his only pants when the applicator cap comes flying off the plastic squeeze bottle. A quick reverse angle shows the kid grinning.

We cut to Joe in a subway station walking with his left hand holding his hat over the wet side of his pants. It covers where he's tried to clean off the ketchup. He gets to a gum machine mirror hanging on the side of an H beam. Joe looks in the mirror at himself and in a type of warped cowboy commandments moment tell s his reflection that "A man's got to do what a man's got to do."

There's a sign post up ahead Joe you are about to pass into ..

Noirsville

Brenda Vaccaro as Shirley 

Barnard Hugues as Towny

Director John Schlesinger along with cinematographer Adam Holender, and editor Hugh A. Robertson created another one of the 8 Million stories in the Naked City. A Neo Noir that won three Oscars. The performances of Hoffman and Voight are stellar, and made even more impressive when you find out that Voight was the native New Yorker and Hoffman was the westerner from Los Angeles, California. It captures a lot of the New York City that I grew up in it's always a pleasant trip back into the past watching and remembering my Times Square, and occasionally recognizing people I saw and places I've been to in the film. And, I also lived out West in Montana and Idaho for 24 years and the Western sequences also ring true. 

Of the major supporting cast Miles, McGiver, and Vaccaro, are all excellent in their cameos. The rest of the players are great with a lot of them made up of some actual New York characters of the times, Viva, Ultra Violet, Paul Morrissey, and future stars Sandy Dunkin and M. Emmitt Walsh in uncredited parts. 8/10