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The point that is often given for the beginning of the New Hollywood era is the collapse of the [[Hays Code]] in the mid-'60s. The Code had already lost its primary reason for being in 1952 when the US Supreme Court declared film to be a protected art form under the First Amendment. By the '60s, major studios had forced it to bend to approve "special exceptions" for critically-hailed, challenging fare, like ''[[The Pawnbroker]]'' with its short scene of plot-relevant nudity and ''[[Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf]]'' with its equally plot-relevant harsh language. Furthermore, when the Code tried to hold its ground with the sexually explicit film ''[[Blow Up]]'' in 1966, [[MGM]] simply defied it and released a film that proved a critical and box office smash hit.
Seeing the writing on the wall, in 1968 the new boss, Jack Valenti, replaced the Code with a much more liberal system of [[Moral Guardians|moral guardianship]], the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) film rating system. Unlike the Hays Code, which only allowed [[Rule
With the floodgates opened, the benefits started pouring through almost immediately. Films like ''[[Bonnie and Clyde (Film)|Bonnie and Clyde]]'', ''[[The Graduate]]'', ''[[Midnight Cowboy]]'', ''[[Cool Hand Luke]]'', ''[[The Producers]]'' and ''[[Easy Rider]]'' broke countless taboos, earning immense critical acclaim and box office returns in the process. Realism and immersion were major themes in such movies, a backlash against the [[Spectacle]] and artificiality that defined the studio system. A symbol of this emphasis on realism was the choice of many filmmakers to shoot on location -- not only was this now far less expensive than shooting on set due to advances in technology, it also heightened the feeling that the people on screen were in a real place. In addition, such films were infused with [[Hotter and Sexier|sexuality]], [[Bloodier and Gorier|graphic]] [[Gorn|violence]], drugs, rock music, [[Anti-Hero|anti-heroes]], anti-establishment themes and other symbols of the '60s counterculture that would've been unthinkable in mainstream American cinema just a few years earlier. Many New Hollywood filmmakers openly admitted to using marijuana and psychedelic drugs, furthering their popularity in the general climate of the '60s. In addition, the rigid white bread cliche of the movie star was challenged with the rise of actors who forced the parameters open like the black [[Sidney Poitier]] and the Jewish and [[Adorkable]] [[Dustin Hoffman]] who hit it big by being seemingly nothing like any major movie star before.
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[[Category:History of Hollywood]]
[[Category:New Hollywood]]
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