Midnight Cowboy - Awards and Honors

Awards and Honors

The film won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay; it is the only X-rated film to win an Oscar in any category, and one of two X-rated films to be nominated for an Oscar (the other being Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange). Both Hoffman and Voight were nominated for Best Actor awards and Sylvia Miles was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, in what is one of the shortest performances ever nominated (clocking in approximately five minutes of screen-time).

There was controversy from critics who felt the MPAA "X" rating for the film was too harsh. The film had also won major awards. The MPAA later broadened the requirements for the "R" rating to allow more content, and in addition raised the age restriction from sixteen to seventeen. The film was later rated "R" for a reissue in 1971 with no edits made. The R rating for the film remains to this day.

The film won six BAFTA Awards. It was also entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival.

This film was Adam Holender's first cinematography assignment; he was recommended to Schlesinger by Holender's childhood friend, filmmaker Roman Polanski.

In 1994, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.