`Midnight Cowboy' Back Without Its Old X-Rating

This has been a summer of 25th anniversaries: Stonewall, Woodstock, the Manson murders. The movies of that summer have also resurfaced, none more notably than "Midnight Cowboy," which begins a week-long run tonight at the Varsity.

Based on a 1965 novel by the late James Leo Herlihy, who was 66 when he took an overdose of sleeping pills last fall, the movie is an outsider's view of New York and the excesses of American society in the late 1960s.

Directed by a British filmmaker, John Schlesinger, it has often been attacked for its trippy, eclectic style (The Village Voice's J. Hoberman recently called it "the clumsiest of new-wave Hollywood movies"), but even its harshest critics acknowledge the brilliance and pathos of its central performances: Jon Voight as Joe Buck, the naive Texas gigolo who has a rough time surviving as a 42nd Street hustler, and Dustin Hoffman as Ratso Rizzo, the unhealthy Times Square thief who cheats, then befriends him.

The Varsity's 35mm print is a restored print of the film, not the pinkish, hard-to-watch version that played at last year's Seattle International Film Festival, as part of a tribute to Schlesinger. Nor is this the massively edited version that appeared on network television a few years ago.

Nothing has been cut, and much has been enhanced. This is how Adam Hollender's cinematography was meant to look, although the picture's original monaural track has received a Dolby-stereo boost that is most noticeable in the use of late Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin," which became more identified with the picture than John Barry's moody score.

"Midnight Cowboy" was X-rated during its original release, and it is still the only X-rated film to win Academy Awards for best picture, director and screenplay (written by the late Waldo Salt). But those were different times. Fleeting frontal nudity or a single use of the F word were enough to get an X rating in 1969.

When Billy Wilder's "Kiss Me Stupid," the most scandalous Hollywood movie of the mid-1960s, was finally given a rating last month, the original uncut version landed a PG-13 "for sex-related plot material." "Midnight Cowboy" now carries an R rating.

Another surprise smash from the summer of 1969, Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider" is back this weekend as a Saturday-night presentation at the Fremont "Almost Free" Outdoor Cinema. It starts at dusk tomorrow in the parking lot behind the Red Door Ale House.

"Rider" hasn't aged as well as "Cowboy," nor did it seem as impressive at the time. What was good about it then is still good: the music, photography and Jack Nicholson's breakthrough performance as a doomed, freedom-loving young lawyer. But it was produced so cheaply, and it made so much money so quickly, that the studios spent the next five years trying to duplicate its success.

New Pike St. series

The Pike St. Cinema is winding up its summer programs with "Animation by Ladislaw Starevitch," at 7:15 and 9 p.m. tonight through Sunday.

At 8 o'clock Wednesday, the theater begins a new series, "Strindberg on Film," with a double bill of the 1987 Swedish film, "Creditors," starring Bibi Andersson and updated from a one-act Strindberg play, and Lee Grant's Strindberg-inspired 1978 American film, "The Stronger," starring Susan Strasberg and Dolores Dorn.

Curated by the Swedish government, this touring collection of 35mm prints also includes Laurence Olivier's rarely shown production of "The Dance of Death," a silent 1912 Swedish version of "The Father," and Alf Sjoberg's 1950s adaptations of "Miss Julie" and "Karin Mansdotter." The series, which will be shown throughout September and early October here, recently played Los Angeles and heads next to Miami Beach.

Next weekend, the theater begins a retrospective of its greatest hits that will run concurrently with the Strindberg films. First up is "The Hippie Temptation," a 1968 CBS Special Report, hosted by Harry Reasoner, that plays at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. next Friday. All seats are $5.

Around town

At 8 o'clock tonight, 911 Media Arts Center will show "Subversive Sex in Queer Porn," a video-lecture about gay-sex films. Tickets are $4 for 911 members, $6 for others . . . Soundtrack Cinema, at 9 p.m. tomorrow on KING-FM, will feature music from summer movies, including Graeme Revell's score for "The Crow," David Newman's music for "I Love Trouble" and Alan Silvestri's compositions for "Forrest Gump" . . . The Seattle Art Museum's Thursday-night fall series will be "Night Is My Beat: The Film Noir Cycle," beginning Oct. 6 with a 35mm presentation of "Mildred Pierce." Several rarities will be screened, including "Black Angel" and 35mm prints of "Raw Deal," "Pushover," "Champion" and "Experiment in Terror." Tickets are $35 for museum members, $40 for others. Information: 654-3100.