ABSTRACT
A variety of forces combined that presented a wave of new talent with the opportunity to make movies, hugely successful movies, that turned the Classical Hollywood aesthetic upside down. Key changes prompted by the Production Code breakdown included the following: America in the 1960s was also experiencing huge social change. Younger audiences, in contrast, embraced the New Hollywood aesthetic that emerged from the deregulated and director-driven output of American filmmaking during the period. Arthur Penn's 1967 release of Bonnie and Clyde is often seen as a watershed moment in the history of contemporary cinema in that the film's overt sexualisation of its lead characters and its glamorisation of outlaw violence offered a direct challenge to the Production Code. The New Hollywood directors were lucky, too, in that they arrived at a time when the studio system turned to new talent as a means to connect with younger audiences and to rectify the plunging cinema attendance figures television ownership incurred.
