10 Movies That Ripped Up The Rule Book

Yes, as we noted already, Easy Rider was just one of the key films that pushed American cinema into all-new places at the end of the 1960s. Midnight Cowboy was another, and was in some respects an even more significant step forward.

1968 saw the introduction of the MPAA ratings system, the code by which films are designated specific categories of age-appropriateness which is still used to this day. At the time, the rating that designated films as strictly adults-only was X, and this would quickly come to be considered undesirable due to its association with pornography.

However, in the earliest days of X, many serious-minded filmmakers seized on the opportunity to tell stories whose content would have been forbidden in years gone by. Such was the case with Midnight Cowboy, director John Schlesinger's adaptation of James Leo Herlihy's novel, which casts Jon Voight as a male prostitute.

It was fairly unprecedented for a major Hollywood film to explicitly address gay issues at the time, but Midnight Cowboy did just that, to major critical and commercial success.

It even picked up several Oscars including Best Picture - and if that doesn't seem a big deal, remember the furore when Brokeback Mountain got snubbed in that category.