ABSTRACT
The newer popular films of the 1960s and 1970s were permeated with a cynicism and suspicion of authority even more prevalent among many of the movie elite than among the general public. Extensive crime and violence in contemporary movies is a legacy of this earlier transformation of both the American film market and those with creative control over the movie industry. This legacy is one of a number of striking features of Hollywood's new American mythos, a much more troubled fiction than that presented in the studio days. The restrictions imposed by the Production Code upon movies about the law and crime had disappeared by the mid-1960s, victims of the demise of the studios themselves and changing social and political attitudes toward censorship and artistic freedom. Police officers have also become victims, especially rank and file officers.
