--- title: "Midnight Cowboy" year: 1969 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/midnight-cowboy" fi1m_score: 85 critics_score: 81 critics_reviews: 12 published: "2026-09-20T05:14:04.526375+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T05:14:28.645263+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Midnight Cowboy (1969) Directed by John Schlesinger · 1h 53m · MPA NC-17 · Drama **Fi1m score: 85** · Critics 81 from 12 reviews *In a sentence:* The boots are new, the friend is a thief and the flat is condemned; welcome to New York > Schlesinger’s New York is as sour as it was in 1969, and Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman make a friendship out of two men the city has no use for. The flashbacks that looked modern then have aged worst. ## Synopsis Texas, the late 1960s. Joe Buck (Jon Voight) quits his job washing dishes in a diner, buys a fringed buckskin jacket and a new hat, and boards a bus to New York planning to be paid by rich women for sex. He checks into a hotel off Times Square and goes hunting on Park Avenue, where Cass (Sylvia Miles) takes him home and then takes his money. In a bar he meets Ratso (Dustin Hoffman), a limping pickpocket who offers to introduce him to a manager, Mr. O’Daniel (John McGiver). When the hotel locks Joe out, Ratso is the only person in the city still speaking to him, and the pair set up in a condemned tenement with no heat. ## Review Joe Buck gets off the bus from Texas in a fringed jacket and a new hat and decides New York is going to work out. John Schlesinger spends 113 minutes taking the hat off him. *Midnight Cowboy*, adapted by Waldo Salt from James Leo Herlihy’s novel, is about a man with the wrong idea and a city that never bothers to correct it, and it is nearly as good as its reputation. The two lead performances are as fine as anyone says. Some of what surrounds them has dated. Jon Voight plays Joe as a man whose confidence has never met anything real. He talks to himself in the mirror, hums along to his radio and tips people he cannot afford to tip. The plan is to be paid by wealthy women for sex, and the first he approaches, Cass (Sylvia Miles), takes him to bed and then, in a single scene that holds a whole life, takes his money. Miles is on screen for a few minutes and we thought about her for the rest of the film. Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso arrives in a bar, limping, coughing, talking fast, and offers to manage Joe. He introduces him to Mr. O’Daniel (John McGiver), who turns out not to be a pimp, and disappears with the fee. When Joe finds him again he has nowhere else to go, and Hoffman does the hard thing: he makes a con man pitiable without once asking us to forgive him. The voice is a wheeze, the walk is a lurch, and the moment in traffic where he slaps a taxi bonnet and shouts that he is walking here has been quoted so often it is a surprise to find it still funny in context. Adam Holender shoots Times Square at night as a smear of neon on wet glass, the camera down among real crowds who look at Joe’s hat and then away. His Texas is flat, bleached and empty. John Robert Lloyd’s production design gives Ratso a room in a condemned tenement, an X painted across the window, one mattress, a hotplate and a radiator that does not work, and Ann Roth keeps Joe’s buckskin clean for exactly as long as his money lasts. The music is credited to John Barry and Toots Thielemans, and its harmonica line is the loneliest sound in the film; Schlesinger rations it. The scene that got us is the one where Ratso first shows Joe the flat. He walks him round it like an estate agent, pointing out the view, defending the cold, insisting it is fine, and Joe, who has been robbed by everyone else, stands there and decides to believe him. We were moved more than we expected, and it was Voight’s face that did it: he knows he is being lied to and has decided it does not matter. Everything the film has to say about the pair is in that flat. What has aged is the editing. Hugh A. Robertson cuts away from the street to Joe’s childhood with Sally Buck (Ruth White) and a girl called Annie (Jennifer Salt), in bleached and tinted stock, and to black-and-white nightmares that tell us Joe is damaged without telling us anything we could not have read off Voight. It looked modern in 1969. Now it looks like a director nervous that two men in a flat would not hold us, when the two men in the flat are why the film has lasted. A long party sequence in the second half has the same restlessness, and the film’s disgust at the gay men Joe deals with is doing work the writing should have done itself. None of that sinks it. The friendship holds, the city holds, and the final stretch, which we will not describe, is as plain and as sad as the rest has earned. It carries an 18 certificate and deserves one; there is a scene in a cinema that is hard to sit through, and it is meant to be. Watch it with the sound up. The harmonica gets in. *Fi1m score 85, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like this, and nearly all of them like it for the same reason. Jon Voight’s Joe Buck and Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso Rizzo are named in almost every review, and the friendship between them, two lonely men in a low-rent New York with no conventional love interest to soften it, is what the reviews return to. The locations draw praise too: Times Square and the city’s shabbier corners are felt to be authentic rather than dressed. Several critics treat the film as a hinge between old Hollywood and the grittier films of the 1970s. The reservations cluster around John Schlesinger’s direction, and specifically the flashbacks. Roger Ebert, writing in 1969, thinks the fashionable tricks undermine the material, and the Los Angeles Times still calls them a flaw a quarter of a century later. Variety is cooler still, seeing shock value more than substance. The pattern is plain: the contemporary reviews are the mixed ones, and the retrospective reviews are almost uniformly warm. ### Reviews we read (12) - **The Times**, Kevin Maher (★★★★★): The tone is deceptively playful as novice prostitute Joe Buck arrives in New York with naive dreams. The beauty is the slowly evolving friendship of Buck and Dustin Hoffman’s eccentric Ratso Rizzo; the direction is radical and the lines are to die for. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/midnight-cowboy-1969-review-radical-and-deceptively-playful-r6dwssj9g) - **Time Out**, Sophie Monks Kaufman (5/5): The critic calls the newly restored film one of the great depictions of the transition to the gritty 1970s and a moving epitaph to its two striving characters and the American dream itself. Strong praise goes to the central performances by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/midnight-cowboy) - **The AV Club**, Noel Murray (A-): The critic sees the film as a flawed but effective New Hollywood landmark that blends edgy subject matter with pop sensibilities, praising the strong lead performances by Voight and Hoffman, authentic New York and Texas locations, visual wit, and emotional core of loneliness and yearning. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/midnight-cowboy-1798201487) - **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): Fifty years on, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman’s squabbling amid the squalor of low-rent New York remains a heartbreaking triumph. The film is about two men finding friendship in the desolate common cause of their loneliness, delivered with potency and force. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/12/midnight-cowboy-review-john-schlesinger-jon-voight-dustin-hoffman) - **Empire**, Adam Smith (85/100, inferred): The review praises the film as a landmark that took risks in the late 1960s, highlighting its outsider perspective on New York and the groundbreaking performances by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as its emotional core. It notes the film's Oscar success despite its X rating and calls the mix of Oscar-winner and cult classic a testament to superb performances and a compelling script. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/midnight-cowboy-review/) - **Slant Magazine**, Niles Schwartz (85/100, inferred): The critic presents the film as a key New Hollywood work marking the transition from Old Hollywood, highlighting the central unlikely friendship between the delusional Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo, the themes of isolation and human connection amid a commodified world, and Schlesinger’s expressive visual style and use of varying film stocks. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/midnight-cowboy/) - **Financial Times**, Nigel Andrews (80/100, inferred): British director John Schlesinger’s first American film remains a startlingly accomplished New York tale. Voight combines rent-boy venality with a dimwitted innocence almost radiant; Hoffman proved his beginner’s virtuosity playing tattered-and-battered Ratso Rizzo. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/fd4b35a6-d4a2-11e9-8367-807ebd53ab77) - **Los Angeles Times** (75/100, inferred): The film's power endures through its lead performances and adventurous spirit from 1969, even as technical excesses like flashbacks remain flaws; it stands as a reminder of bold adult filmmaking from its era. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-02-20-ca-25046-story.html) - **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (70/100, inferred): The film is a slick but ultimately moving adaptation that excels in its acting, especially Dustin Hoffman's Ratso, and captures the feel of its time and place despite some exploitative elements. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1969/05/26/archives/film-midnight-cowboy-dustin-hoffman-and-jon-voight-are-starred.html) - **Variety**, Robert J. Landry (60/100, inferred): The sordid story of a male hustler should succeed commercially on shock value and the star power of Dustin Hoffman; strong performances from Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight stand out amid the modern, topical, and sometimes misanthropic tone. [Read](https://variety.com/1969/film/reviews/midnight-cowboy-1200421996/) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (50/100, inferred): The performances of Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight are outstanding and the Times Square setting feels authentic, but John Schlesinger's direction undermines the material with trendy gimmicks, excessive flashbacks, and fashionable cinematic tricks. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/midnight-cowboy-1969) - **Eye for Film**, Jennie Kermode (90/100, inferred): The film stands out for its emotionally honest portrayal of male friendship between two very different men, with no conventional love interest. Schlesinger's direction creates a vivid, intimate portrait of New York City and its outcasts. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/midnight-cowboy-1969-film-review-by-jennie-kermode) ## Details - **Director:** John Schlesinger - **Director:** John Schlesinger - **Screenplay:** Waldo Salt - **Novel:** James Leo Herlihy - **Cinematography:** Adam Holender - **Editor:** Hugh A. Robertson - **Music:** John Barry, Toots Thielemans - **Production design:** John Robert Lloyd - **Costume design:** Ann Roth - **Producer:** Jerome Hellman - **Cast:** Dustin Hoffman as Ratso; 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 - **Runtime:** 1h 53m - **Certificate (MPA):** NC-17 - **Release (the US):** 30 July 1969 - **Genres:** Drama - **Budget:** $4 million - **Box office:** $45 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o29GST0Lj28 ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, HR, HU, IE, IN, IT, JP, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1970: Best Actor (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Director (won); Best Picture (won); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (won) ## If you liked this - *Scarecrow* (1973): Hackman and Pacino drift across America; the same friendship, with the same weather. - *Accattone* (1961): Pasolini’s Roman pimp is Ratso with better teeth and fewer illusions. - *Naked* (1993), Fi1m 84: Mike Leigh sends David Thewlis through London at night; talkier, angrier, just as cold. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/naked.md) - *Fat City* (1972): John Huston’s boxers in Stockton, California, losing slowly and politely. - *Tangerine* (2015), Fi1m 84: Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, shot on phones, with hustlers who move faster than Joe. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/tangerine.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. 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