In 1970, the “New Hollywood” movement received its first Best Picture Oscar. Skeezy street drama Midnight Cowboy captured the explicit, down-and-dirty, and modern mood of the post-studio system American wave better than any previous winner, and its Academy Award committed the exploits of two low-level scammers and hustlers to Hollywood history.
Even though crime is an ordinary and unglamorous element in Midnight Cowboy, something about its immersion in a criminal world struck a chord. Three crime flicks won Best Picture in the first half of the ‘70s alone: William Friedkin’s cutthroat drug trafficking thriller The French Connection, and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part I and Part II, mafia epics made with a young visionary’s verve and cineliteracy. It would take nearly 30 years for another crime film to win Best Picture, but it makes sense that The Departed would be the one to cinch it. Released 20 years ago, Martin Scorsese’s foul-mouthed, cross-cutting saga of blood and identity is in sync with the cynical, psychologically-tinged crime films that share its Oscar glory.
