Midnight Cowboy

[John Schlesinger's] spray of venom is just about overpowering, yet the two actors and the simple Of Mice and Men kind of relationship at the heart of the story save the picture.

Director John Schlesinger and screenwriter Waldo Salt pump so much emotion into it that it becomes a moving epitaph both to its two striving characters and the American dream itself.

Midnight Cowboy is America's challenge to any film from foreign shores... From now on, it is going to be difficult for the cinema snob to declare tritely that films in this country are made for immature audiences.

John Schlesinger, the British director who gave us Darling and Far From the Madding Crowd, has had the audacity to come to this country and capture on film the flavor of sun-baked West Texas and seamy New York City better than any director before him.

This is obviously the sort of film in which people argue endlessly about which of the principals steals it, and the argument is irresistible, if pointless. Both are very good, in different ways.

Mr. Voight's and Mr. Hoffman's performances are pretty well impossible to fault. I found the film profoundly touching and funny, and quite hypnotically enjoyable to watch.

Gritty, grimy, and groundbreaking for its time, few films have been more avant-garde in approach, nor more perpetually relevant than Midnight Cowboy.

The characters’ dreams and memories intermingle with their daily actions, sometimes combining in surreal ways. The camerawork is amazing, capturing vistas of glory and grime from the dawn of 1970s New York.

The movie is brilliantly acted by newcomer Jon Voight, in the lead, and Dustin Hoffman as Ratso Rizzo, his pathetic companion. Not only a study of loneliness, the movie probes the depths of love.

Both performances are masterly. Rizzo, the human wreck, is a dream of a part and Hoffman plays him for all he is worth, gradually turning our disgust into sympathy. Voight's identification with Joe Buck is so perfect, he doesn't seem to be acting at all.