From the Edge of Dementia

#7  DUSTIN HOFFMAN as Ratso Rizzo in MIDNIGHT COWBOY  (1969)

"What makes us tear up at the end of this ode to male friendship in the face of dying dreams is not so much Ratso's ultimate fate, but what he represents: the perseverance of humanity in an unfathomably crummy world.  It's an achievement that rests solely on Hoffmans's slumped, filthy, convulsing shoulders.  What he does in his close-up as he watches big, dumb, beautiful Joe Buck (Jon Voight) prance in front of the mirror is simply astounding --an agonizing expression both of tenderness and loss.  Director John Schlesinger needed some convincing that Hoffman, best known at the time for The Graduate, could play a tubercular street hustler.  But with pebbles in one shoe and a sweaty, pinched, rodentlike facial transformation, he gave us a heartbreaking portrait of a life lived wholly in the margins."

Courtesy of Premiere Magazine.

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