The end of the 1960's saw American cinema getting to really strut its stuff as the Hayes Code, which put restrictions on what kind of material American films could cover, collapsed and the floodgates opened in terms of major American films suddenly being able to deal with aspects of reality that had previously been off-limits. One movie that certainly would never have been allowed to exist in the days of the Hayes Code existing was
Midnight Cowboy, a John Schlesinger directorial effort whose content was so explicit that it was given an X-rating (the equivalent in that day and age for the modern-day NC-17 rating) from the MPAA.
