‘Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of the Midnight Cowboy’ Review: An Uneven Documentary About the Oscar-Winning Breakthrough

A big publishing trend these days is to write an entire book about making a great movie. There are books about it in recent years. west side history (the 1961 Oscar winner, not the Spielberg remake), wild bunch, Chinatown s Godfather, to name a few. Glenn Frankel, who wrote the first books on creation. noon s search enginestracked last year Filming a Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation and the Making of a Dark Classic. Now that book, in turn, has inspired a new documentary by Nancy Buirski, set in Venice and Tellurida.

While the 101-minute film never has the breadth and depth of the 340-page book, Buirski’s film has the advantage of providing on-camera interviews with several of the film’s protagonists, including actors Jon Voight, Brenda Vaccaro, and Bob. . . Voight is especially enamored of his admiration for director John Schlesinger and the film’s unflinching portrayal of the friendship between two social outcasts, Joe Buck and the intriguing Rizzo Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman. Buirsky was unable to obtain an interview with Hoffman, although he relies on audio interviews conducted by Frankel as research for his book.

One of the film’s flaws is that it relies heavily on voice commentary, not just from Hoffman, but from interviews with Schlesinger and screenwriter Waldo Salt that took place decades ago. (Schlesinger died in 2003.) Some of these disembodied voices are not identified as often as they should and are becoming increasingly tedious. Salt’s daughter, actress and writer Jennifer Salt, played a small role. midnight cowboy and also became romantically involved with Voight during the film’s production, providing some of the clearest on-camera commentary.

Compared to Frankel’s book, the film suffers in many ways. He managed to intertwine two major themes: the decline of New York represented in this period. midnight cowboy and the film’s innovative gay content (much of it derived from the original novel by James Leo Herlich), reflecting a major shift in American culture in the late 1960s. Buirsky includes some pertinent commentary from gay historians such as Charles Kaisers (gay metropolis), and also explores Schlesinger’s struggles with his sexuality. Here, the filmmaker draws on several revealing interviews with Schlesinger’s nephew, Ian Buruma, and the director’s life partner, Michael Childers. But, perhaps inevitably, it does not do justice to this larger theme of Frenkel’s book.

Instead, Buirski tries to connect the film to the turmoil surrounding the Vietnam War, and the comparison often feels forced. Of course, many of the dark films made in the late 1960s implicitly reflected the disillusionment caused by the US involvement in Vietnam, but Buirski overstates the point without providing enough subtlety to make it clear. War is shown at the beginning and end of this film, and this emphasis feels forced.

Perhaps the film’s strongest elements, aside from some effective interviews, are the generous clips. midnight cowboy You. These excerpts highlight the film’s more playful elements, including the less idyllic depictions of gay sexual encounters and the tenderness in the scenes between Hoffman and Voight.

Buirsky produced several early documents, including one on director Sidney Lumet, an early case study of Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage and other powerful films about racial conflict. His latest film may not be his strongest, but it will encourage viewers to learn more about some of the forgotten players. midnight cowboy Saga, including Waldo and Jennifer Salt, cinematographer Adam Hollander and casting director Marion Doherty, who were instrumental in capturing Voight Schlesinger’s attention.