Midnight Cowboy - The Criterion Collection

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.Features:New 4K digital restoration, with an uncompressed monaural soundtrackAlternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master AudioAudio commentary from 1991 featuring director John Schlesinger and producer Jerome HellmanNew selected-scene commentary by cinematographer Adam HolenderThe 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 HillmannTwo short 2004 documentaries on the making and release of Midnight CowboyInterview with actor Jon Voight on The David Frost Show from 1970Interview 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