Midnight Cowboy, as difficult as it may be to fathom, was filmed fifty years ago this year. The only X-rated movie to win an Oscar for Best Picture, John Schlesinger’s exploration of loneliness featured performances by Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight whose friendship and loyalty in the film, mirrored the admiration the actors had for each other in real life. It didn’t start out that way.

Schlesinger, on the success of Darling, was given his choice of projects by United Artists. He chose James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel which Hoffman and Voight, unbeknownst to each other, had also read and were eager to do as a film. Hoffman had been turning down projects since his overnight success in The Graduate, looking for just the right role. He had his sights set on tubercular Ratso Rizzo, but Schlesinger dismissed him out of hand as being wrong for the part. Hoffman refused to be deterred, went without shaving for a week, dressed down and met with Schlesinger in the automat on New York’s Forty-Second Street, that would later be used in the film, at 1 A.M. on a weekday morning to convince him he was right for the part.

Voight had admired Schlesinger ever since seeing his 1962 film A Kind of Loving. When he found out Schlesinger was making the film version he contacted Marion Dougherty, the casting director who had gotten him the second lead in the 1965 off-Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge opposite Hoffman’s former roommate, Robert Duvall. At her insistence, Schlesinger and producer Jerome Hellman agreed to test him for the role of Joe Buck, the would-be stud-for-hire, although they had by then settled on three finalists, Michael Sarrazin, Kyle Martin, and Don Stroud. Hellman liked Voight as did Hoffman despite-the-fact that he and Voight detested each other since working on A View from the Bridge for which Hoffman was the stage manager. Schlesinger, though, preferred Sarrazin and he was signed. Sarrazin’s handlers, however, allegedly upped his price to three times what he had asked for and United Artists balked. Sarrazin was dropped and went on to make They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? instead. Voight was in and he, Hoffman, and Schlesinger bonded over rehearsals for the film.

Waldo Salt, whose three screenplays after being liberated from the Hollywood black list, beginning with Taras Bulba, were stinkers, was determined to take his time and do it right with Midnight Cowboy. He worked exhaustively on improvisations with Hoffman and Voight to tweak the script. Even so, the film’s most iconic line, Hoffman’s “I’m walkin’ here! I’m walkin’ here!” was improvised in the moment by Hoffman when a taxicab ran a red light and almost hit the two actors crossing the street during a key scene. Likewise, the film’s final image of what looked like a tear on the window of the bus outside of Hoffman’s face was not in the script but caused by the beginning of a sudden rain shower in Miami.

On the other hand, the film’s mix of black-and-white and color film stock in early scenes was long thought to be caused by budget concerns but was in the shooting script.

The film opened to fantastic reviews and great business but with its X-rating was considered too out of the mainstream to be a serious Oscar contender. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was thought to have it in the bag, but Midnight Cowboy pulled off surprise wins for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay. Hoffman and Voight were nominated but lost to John Wayne in True Grit. The unknown Sylvia Miles, who was so convincing as a middle-aged prostitute that nearly everyone thought she was hired off the street, was nominated in support but lost to Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower. Post-Oscar, the film’s X-rating was changed to an R without a single frame of the film having been changed.

Previous home video versions of the film have never looked right. Most annoyingly, there was a greenish tint that to some scenes that was not in the original film. The tint is gone in Criterion’s meticulous 4K digital restoration, available on both Blu-ray and DVD. The generous extras include newly recorded video essays with cinematographer Adam Holender and Schlesinger’s life partner, photographer Michael Childers, as well as a wealth of archival material including a 2002 BAFTA Los Angles tribute to Schlesinger.

Criterion has re-released its Blu-ray package of Howard Hawks’ 1948 masterpiece Red River, another film about friendship and loyalty, starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift as his adoptive son with whom he has a love-hate relationship, in both release versions of the film. This Blu-ray-only edition cuts down on the bulky packaging of the previous release by eliminating the accompanying DVD discs, but still includes the Borden Chase paperback story upon which the film was based.

Paramount Japan has released a beautifully restored Blu-ray of David Lean’s 1955 masterpiece Summertime, another film about loneliness, this one filmed in Venice with Katharine Hepburn as a middle-aged secretary having the time of her life with Rossano Brazzi before resigning herself to a life of spinsterhood. It’s a Region A release, playable on North American players, and infinitely superior to the now twenty-year-old Criterion DVD.

Coincidental to the Criterion release of Midnight Cowboy, Kino Lorber has released Blu-ray and DVD editions of a long-unavailable Michael Sarrazin film, 1975’s The Reincarnation of Peter Proud.

The most popular adult horror film since 1973’s The Exorcist, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud was the film version of the best-selling novel of the same name. Although it was released on VHS in the mid-1980s, rights issues between Bing Crosby Productions and other production companies kept it from being given further home video releases until now.

Sarrazin plays a young man whose nightmares turn out to be memories of a previous life in which he was murdered by his wife (a pre-Superman Margot Kidder). On his quest for answers, he falls in love with the woman (a post-Summer of ’42 Jennifer O’Neill) who is the grown-up daughter of his previous incarnation. It’s still very creepy all these years later and remains highly watchable with a very unsettling ending.

Olive Films has released a Blu-ray upgrade of Robert Wise’s 1959 film noir Odds Against Tomorrow. Centered around a bank heist that goes terribly wrong, Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan are partners in crime, having been brought together by Ed Begley, who hate each other. Shelley Winters and Gloria Grahame co-star. Although much of it is routine, it builds to an exciting and highly satisfying ending that earned the film a Golden Globe for Best Film Promoting International Understanding.

This week’s new releases include the long-awaited Blu-ray upgrades of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and The Big Country.