Midnight Cowboy 1969

The Film:

I've seen Midnight Cowboy before. Only once, and quite some time ago. I remember being really impressed and quite moved by it. I loved the characters and performances of Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight (Hoffman doing something totally different just a year after The Graduate!) and I remember the general story - country boy comes to New York to seek an easy fortune as an escort and finds that things aren't as easy as he thought. But that's really all, so I'm looking forward to watching it again.

I'm also looking forward to another film that is new and fresh and different. I love my musicals, but since The Apartment hinted at something darker at the beginning of the decade, there's only really been Steiger and Poitier taking the idea any further. Midnight Cowboy dives right in there!

It still holds the dubious honour of being the only X Rated (in US terms) film to win Best Picture - although it's pretty tame in comparison to some recent films, and it did get re-classified to a more reasonable R rating a few years later. However, it's still stands as one of the key moments where the Academy recognised that films were also for grown ups and no subject was off limits if the movie was a good one.

The Ceremony:

It was held again at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, on April 7th 1970. Again, there was no actual host - it was billed as being presented by seventeen "Friends of Oscar" (not a euphemism!), one of who was.....wait for it.....Bob Hope. Of course!

This year still remains the highest-rated ceremony on the Neilsen ratings (the US system for TV ratings) which shows what a big thing it all had become by this point. The Academy also attempted to have everything broadcast right around the world for the first time this year. This didn't quite work out, due to the timings of the ceremony being awkward for many major markets. Discussions were held about changing the start time, but that idea was rejected.

It was the first year that all the acting, directing and picture nominations were for films made in colour. And it was the first and only year (to date) that a film got nine nominations without one for Best Picture. The film was "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" and it really should have got a Best Picture nom (over Hello Dolly!). It only won one award (see below!)


Other Notable Winners That Night:

Babs looking stylish again, handing over the
Oscar to Mr Marion Morrison!

Midnight Cowboy took the big two, but Voight and Hoffman lost out to The Duke - John Wayne had been pulling in the crowds (and the money) for years, but had only been nominated once before. The Academy clearly felt that this was his time. I'm not a big fan, but I do like True Grit, which was the film he won for - and I'm surprised it wasn't up for Best Picture.

Maggie Smith took Best Actress for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Gig Young won Best Supporting Actor for They Shoot Horses Don't They? - both of these are brilliant films that weren't up for Best Picture. 1969 was a great year! Goldie Hawn also won her Oscar this year, for Cactus Flower (a film which seems to be almost forgotten)


Best Song:

They didn't get Best Picture, but "Everybody's Talkin'" wasn't written specifically for Midnight Cowboy, so Butch and Sundance were a shoo in for Best Song. This is another one that I remember being played by one of my wind-up toys when I was a child - it was a Fisher Price thing that was a bit like a radio - so in my head this is more like a nursery rhyme than a Bacharach and David classic. Anyway, here it is in it's original setting, with the lovely Mr Newman doing clever things with his bike!

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Hello boys! See you again in few years' time....

I like Midnight Cowboy. Quite a lot, in fact. Objectively I can concede that it deserves its Oscar and that it was a good thing all round that it won it. However, one of my absolute favourite films of all time was nominated this year, so I have to be subjective!

Firstly, the other contenders - very serious and very highly acclaimed foreign language film "Z" (which won in its more specific category!), "Anne of the Thousand Days" (yet more lavish British history) and "Hello Dolly" (Babs again, fun but really not deserving of a nomination!) I would also have put "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" up there - I love that film!

However, it's all about the blue-eyed boys for me this year. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a wonderful film and gets better with every watching (and there have been many!). Newman, Redford and director George Roy Hill got Best Picture a few years later for another brilliant film, but it almost feels like a consolation prize. Butch and Sundance are one of the best pairings ever in film - and it's a real shame that the two actors only did one more film together. I think they brought the best out of each other!

Our Verdict:

Classic buddy set up with a twist

 After declaring my love for Butch and Sundance in the previous paragraph, I went off and watched the thing again. Seeing it so soon after watching the film that stole its Oscar, I was surprised by quite how many parallels there are between the two films.

They are both about cowboys - but there's very little else in common there! What we do have is two "buddy" films where tough men allow themselves to show their love and tenderness for one another, right to the point of death. Midnight Cowboy does this in a really heart-wrenching way. Much has been written about the possible gay subtext in the film, but whether or not that is true and/or intentional is neither here nor there and a bit of a distraction from what we have got - two people struggling who need someone and find each other. The way that Buck and Rizzo start to realise how much they depend on each other and how much they care about each other is very well done indeed.

I don't think Tony Soper and Sue Ingle ever actually went
to Florida!

The other thing that BCATSK and MC have in common is the unusual filming techniques that tell the story. They both have musical sequences that slot in nicely and don't need words to tell the story (although MC's Florida sequence is slightly spoiled for Brits of a certain age who associate the music with "Wildtrack" - about as far from Florida sunshine as you can get!). They also both use black and white sequences in unusual ways to tell their stories - in Midnight Cowboy this is used sparingly and to great effect to try and get inside Buck's troubled mind. I can't think of any mainstream films that do this quite in the same way before this point - certainly nothing we've seen so far in this challenge.

Fleeting black and white arthouse-y goodness

While BCATSK uses these techniques for whimsy, Midnight Cowboy uses them to heighten the tension and deepen the dark storytelling. Objectively, this probably makes it the better film (at least in terms of winning the Oscar). In terms of themes this is the first really "grown up" film we've seen. We get sex, drugs and violence. We get openly gay (as well as closeted, and possibly closeted) characters who are there for drama, not just for laughs. We get a whole raft of morally dubious characters, several of whom we find ourselves rooting for (despite, ultimately, none of them really being likeable - although that doesn't seem to matter!)

Not all love stories follow the same format,
or even the same sort of love

This was the second time I'd seen this film. There were some parts of it I remembered very clearly, and quite a lot I had forgotten. I'm not sure I'm going to rush to see it again in a hurry, but I think it is a great film. There is a lot to be impressed with about it and there is a lot in the storytelling that is worth hearing. It was about time the Academy recognised something a bit different and a bit edgy - and also controversial. (After all, European films had been doing this sort of adult drama to great acclaim for several years now). But above all this is a story with heart - two characters showing what it means to love and care for someone. This is simultaneously the most and least conventional aspect of Midnight Cowboy and, for me, it is this that makes the whole film.