Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy

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Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy

2023

1h 41m

Documentary

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

91%

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33 Reviews

68%

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

A half century after its release, Midnight Cowboy remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. With beguiling performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as two loners who join forces out of desperation, blacklist survivor Waldo Salt's brilliant screenplay, and John Schlesinger's fearless direction, the 1969 film became the only X- rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its vivid and compassionate depiction of a more realistic, unsanitized New York City and its inhabitants paved the way for a generation’s worth of gritty movies with complex characters and adult themes. But this is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy: it is about the deeply gifted and flawed people behind a dark and difficult masterpiece; New York City in a troubled time of cultural ferment; and the era that made a movie and the movie that made an era. Featuring extensive archival material and compelling new interviews, director Nancy Buirski illuminates how one film captured the essence of a time and a place, reflecting a rapidly changing society with striking clarity.

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Critics Consensus

As engrossing as it is ambitious, Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy contextualizes a landmark film within the pivotal moment of its creation.

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Mark Jenkins

Washington Post

Sep 6, 2023

3/4

Obliquely but evocatively, Desperate Souls ponders the many roles of the cowboy: gay icon, cinematic hero and symbol of American manifest destiny from the Rockies to the Mekong.

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Odie Henderson

Boston Globe

Jul 8, 2023

2.5/4

“Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy” is a documentary as unwieldy as its title. It’s undermined by the sheer scope of its examination, which includes details that are hammered into its study so oddly that they strain credibility.

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Claudia Puig

FilmWeek (LAist)

Jun 28, 2023

I liked how it captures that sense of iconic change going on at the time.

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Dan Bayer

Next Best Picture

Jan 29, 2024

7/10

Simultaneously too much and not enough, Buirski’s film manages to situate its subject perfectly in a historical context. However, it leaves many ideas either half-formed or glanced over in its effort to cover so much in such a tight timeframe.

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Stephen Silver

The SS Ben Hecht

Jan 1, 2024

4/5

It's great, featuring an immersive look at the film and its themes, of both the countercultural and queer varieties.

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Mark R. Leeper

Mark Leeper's Reviews

Dec 24, 2023

8/10

DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY is a history of the 1950s and 1960s by clips from films and other media. There is some discussion of the effect MIDNIGHT COWBOY had, but it primarily looks at how the film came to be at all.

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Nat S

@RT77748673 Sep 27, 2023

Really fascinating and entertaining doc. Loved it.

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dave d

@RT34924333 Sep 21, 2023

Well that Jon Voight interview went well. Unfocused and meandering into social issues and too all over the map. Good in segments, but too hard to contain. Final Score: 4.2/10

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Marilyn H

@DocuFilmLover Sep 10, 2023

This felt like a draft of a film, not a film. I loved Midnight Cowboy and have seen it many times. I know Buirski's desire was to honor the film and to explore that moment in time. I wish she had done that, but she did neither. The film is confusing and redundant, it kept covering topics, moving on, and then, for some unknown reason, circling back to them. There were about 6 different endings. I read somewhere that she walked into the edit room without a script or an outline and that her films came out of conversations she had with her editor. That may have been a good method for her other films, but not for this one. It is simply unkempt. Apparently neither her editor nor her producers seemed to be able to tell her that the Empress had no clothes. I had great hopes for this film, Buirski's final one as she recently passed away. If you want to see something that she did really well, see "The Loving Story."

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Jeronimo J

@Jero13 Jul 12, 2023

QUIERO QUE BAJE EL 100% LISTO XD

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Paul

Jun 24, 2023

Outstanding documentary, music and editing

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Synopsis

A half century after its release, Midnight Cowboy remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. With beguiling performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as two loners who join forces out of desperation, blacklist survivor Waldo Salt's brilliant screenplay, and John Schlesinger's fearless direction, the 1969 film became the only X- rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its vivid and compassionate depiction of a more realistic, unsanitized New York City and its inhabitants paved the way for a generation’s worth of gritty movies with complex characters and adult themes. But this is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy: it is about the deeply gifted and flawed people behind a dark and difficult masterpiece; New York City in a troubled time of cultural ferment; and the era that made a movie and the movie that made an era. Featuring extensive archival material and compelling new interviews, director Nancy Buirski illuminates how one film captured the essence of a time and a place, reflecting a rapidly changing society with striking clarity.

Director: Nancy Buirski
Producer: Nancy Buirski, Simon Kilmurry, Susan Margolin
Screenwriter: Nancy Buirski, Nancy Buirski
Distributor: Zeitgeist Films / Kino Lorber
Production Co: Augusta Films, Foothill Productions, Cineflix Productions
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Jun 23, 2023, Limited
Box Office (Gross USA): $54.9K
Runtime: 1h 41m

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