Midnight Cowboy's Birthday
On May 25, 1969, John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy premiered in New York. On the same day, the demonstration of this film began in cinemas in the United States and Canada. Initially, the film received a rather serious age restriction: "children under 17 must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian," and soon it received the signature "no one under 17 admitted".
The film is based on the novel of the same name by American writer James Leo Herlihy, published in 1965. Then, in 1965, screenwriter Waldo Salt wrote a screenplay based on the novel and offered it to John Schlesinger. Schlesinger was interested in the script, but at that moment he was already working on the film "Darling", and after it he was going to put on the film "Far from the Madding Crowd", so he postponed Salt's script for an indefinite time and soon forgot about it. In 1967, John Schlesinger came across a little-known Yugoslav film "Kad budem mrtav i beo (When I Am Dead and Gone)" directed by Zivojin Pavlovic, which reminded him of the script based on Herlihy's novel, and he decided to direct the film according to this script.
John Schlesinger turned to United Artists to make the film from a script by Waldo Salt. However, the management of the film company considered the proposed script too dirty and obscene and refused to participate in the proposed project. However, Schlesinger managed to get producer Jerome Hellman interested in his project. Together with him, they managed to convince the management of United Artists that the film adaptation of Herlihy's novel was promising, while agreeing to work without a fixed fee, only for a percentage of future profits.
Initially, Michael Sarrazin was planned for the role of Joe Buck, but shortly before the start of filming, he considered the fee offered to him insufficient and turned down the role. However, it is possible that the matter is not only and not so much in the amount of the fee, but also in the fact that the role in the film by Sydney Pollack "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" attracted him more. Jon Voight, at that time still a little-known actor, was quite satisfied with the role of a beggarly gigolo and a fee of 17 thousand dollars. For comparison: the fee of the performer of the second main role - Dustin Hoffman - amounted to 700 thousand dollars. Dustin Hoffman rose to movie star status with his role in "The Graduate" (1967), and Mike Nichols, director of "The Graduate", strongly discouraged Hoffman from taking part in the Schlesinger film, believing that the role of Ratso-Rizzo would seriously damage the actor's reputation. However, the proposed fee outweighed Nichols' arguments. For comparison, for his role in "The Graduate" Hoffman received $17,000.
A month after the premiere, "Midnight Cowboy" took part in the Berlin International Film Festival, where it was nominated for the main award - the Golden Bear. However, the jury of the festival, chaired by the German film, theater and opera director Johannes Schaaf, awarded the main award to the Yugoslav film "Rani radovi (Early Works)" by Želimir Zilnik. The management of the film company United Artists was offended by this decision of the jury and for 10 years refused to submit their films to participate in the Berlin Film Festival. However, Schlesinger's film did not remain without an award at all, receiving the Prize of the International Catholic Film Organization (OCIC). Surprisingly: children under 17 are not allowed to watch, but for Catholics - that's it!
At the beginning of the next year, 1970, the film received 7 nominations for the American Golden Globe Award, but in the most important nominations - Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Director - "Midnight Cowboy" and its director John Schlesinger lost to "Anne of the Thousand Days" and, accordingly, to its director Charles Jarrott. However, Jon Voight won the Most Promising Newcomer - Male award.
A little later, "Midnight Cowboy" received 7 nominations for the Academy Award, of which it won three, including the two most important ones: Best Picture and Best Director. Moreover, in these nominations "Midnight Cowboy" "jumped" and "They Shoot Horses" with Sydney Pollack, and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" with Roy George Hill.
After that, the film "Midnight Cowboy" and its director literally rained down film awards from European film forums: 6 BAFTA awards from the British Film Academy, including the most important - for Best Film and Best Director; Danish Film Bodil Award for Best Non-European Film; two Italian David di Donatello awards, including one to John Schlesinger for Best Foreign Director.
Nevertheless, Roger Ebert cannot be said to have been completely delighted with this film. He gave the film three stars out of 4 possible and wrote in a review:
""Midnight Cowboy" comes heartbreakingly close to being the movie we want it to be. The performances have a flat, painful accuracy. The world of Times Square, a world of people without hope and esteem, seems terribly real. Here is America's underbelly and it even smells that way. And seeing these things and reaching to them, we are ready to praise the movie where we found them. And cannot. There has been a failure somewhere in the director's faith in his materials. John Schlesinger has not been brave enough to tell his story and draw his characters with the simplicity they require. He has taken these magnificent performances, and his own careful perception of American society, and dropped them into an offensively trendy, gimmick-ridden, tarted-up, vulgar exercise in fashionable cinema. Trying to get the good out of "Midnight Cowboy" is like looking at a great painting through six inches of Jell-O. It is there — the greatness is there — but unworthy hands have meddled with it almost beyond repair."
But the Soviet, and later the Russian film critics, John Schlesinger's film was clearly to the taste. Even in spite of the fact that the wide Soviet cinema audience was denied to see the film in cinemas. The famous Russian film critic Sergei Kudryavtsev called this film
"bitter, impartial, truthful in the atmosphere of action and human characters, an impartial testimony of America, seen by a person from the outside, but as if from the inside, ... a socially critical debunking of one of the popular American myths about prosperity, not limited to superficial mockery, demonstrative turning everything to the other side."
Evgeny Nefyodov praised the film as
"a funeral feast for America, which was highly appreciated by Soviet critics, but, alas, acquired an exceptional (not implied by the creators) relevance for post-perestroika Russia."
As for the evaluation of the film by ordinary moviegoers, first of all it should be noted that with a budget of 3.6 million dollars, the film grossed almost 52.8 million dollars, that is, it paid off more than 14 times. And this despite the fact that initially the film received a rather serious age restrictions. In Ireland, for example, the film was generally banned by the censors as obscene, and this ban was in effect until 1971.
Modern moviegoers also appreciated John Schlesinger's film quite highly. 66% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave "Midnight Cowboy" a score of 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, FilmGourmand's rating of the film "Midnight Cowboy" was 10,091, making it 40th in the Golden Thousand. For films released in 1969, these are the highest figures, which allows us to consider John Schlesinger's film "Midnight Cowboy" the best film of world cinema in 1969.
