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.
Midnight Cowboy is released in a special edition Blu-ray by Criterion on the 28th of May.
