Midnight Cowboy (1969) Criterion (Blu-ray)

Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight star in John Schlesinger's Oscar-winning drama based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy. Texan dishwasher Joe Buck (Voight) dreams of making it big in New York. Convinced that he can make his fortune providing sexual favours for wealthy women, he makes the move to the Big Apple. Unfortunately, the first woman he beds down with, Cass (Sylvia Miles), doesn't have any money to speak of, and borrows some of his. At this point, sleazy street-hustler Enrico 'Ratso' Rizzo (Hoffman) enters the frame, offering to become Joe's 'manager'. The only engagement he can arrange is with a gay Christian (John McGiver), but Joe and Ratso soon become close friends, fantasizsng to each other about the millions they are going to make. The film won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, while both Hoffman and Voight were nominated for Best Actor.

Synopsis

John Schlesinger’s trailblazing Oscar winner, a touchstone of the New American Cinema explosion, in a new 4K restoration.

One of the British New Wave’s most versatile directors, JOHN SCHLESINGER (Billy Liar) came to New York in the late-1960s to make Midnight Cowboy, a picaresque story of friendship that captured a city in crisis and sparked a new era of Hollywood movies. JON VOIGHT (Coming Home) delivers a career-making performance as Joe Buck, a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy city women; he finds a companion in Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida, played by DUSTIN HOFFMAN in a radical departure from his breakthrough in The Graduate. A critical and commercial success despite controversy over what the MPAA termed its “homosexual frame of reference,” Midnight Cowboy became the first X-rated film to receive the best picture Oscar, and decades on, its influence still reverberates through cinema.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio
• Audio commentary from 1991 featuring director John Schlesinger and producer Jerome Hellman
• New selected-scene commentary by cinematographer Adam Holender
• The Crowd Around the Cowboy, a 1969 short film made on location for Midnight Cowboy
• Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter’s Journey, an Academy Award–nominated documentary from 1990 by Eugene Corr and Robert Hillmann
• Two short 2004 documentaries on the making and release of Midnight Cowboy
• Interview with actor Jon Voight on The David Frost Show from 1970
• Interview from 2000 with Schlesinger for BAFTA Los Angeles
• Excerpts from the 2002 BAFTA LA Tribute to Schlesinger, featuring Voight and actor Dustin Hoffman
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Harris