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The main aim of this paper is to study a number of American key films from the 1960s and to relate them to the cultural and historical spirit of the age. In its critical approach, this paper depends mainly on Roland Barthes’ theories and concepts regarding the visual image and semiotics. The main films that will be studied include “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), directed by John Schlesinger; “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), directed by Arthur Penn; and “The Wild Bunch” (1969), directed by Sam Peckinpah. The researchers argue that studying the content and various forms of these films in particular is significant because it reveals cultural and ideological messages about the 1960s. The present paper is also an attempt to shed light on Roland Barthes’ arguments about film theory. Despite the fact that the sum of his writings on film is relatively small, a closer scrutiny of these writings reveals that he has a vast influence on the field of film studies. His ideas on semiotics and structuralism are influential and can be extensively applied during film analysis.

American culture changed radically over the course of the 1960s, and the culture of Hollywood was no exception. The film industry began the decade confidently churning out epic spectacles and lavish musicals, but became flummoxed as new aesthetics and modes of production emerged, and low-budget youth pictures likeEasy Riderbecame commercial hits.New Constellations: Movie Stars of the 1960stells the story of the final glory days of the studio system and changing conceptions of stardom, considering such Hollywood icons as Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman alongside such hallmarks of youth culture as Mia Farrow and Dustin Hoffman. Others, like Sidney Poitier and Peter Sellers, took advantage of the developing independent and international film markets to craft truly groundbreaking screen personae. And some were simply \"famous for being famous,\" with celebrities like Zsa Zsa Gabor and Edie Sedgwick paving the way for today's reality stars.

Art Simon identifies a cycle of New Hollywood films representing urban crisis and the failure of cinema's most trusted heroes – the cop and the cowboy – to prevail. Produced between 1968 and 1976, these films feature cops breaking the law in order to enforce it and cowboys transported to the city, finding that their Western‐styled masculinity takes on a whole new meaning. Throughout the latter half of the 1960s, an urban studies literature emerged that produced a deeply troubling image of the American city while simultaneously outlining an unprecedented agenda for renewal. No film is as central to the New York cycle and, indeed, to the era of renaissance, as Midnight Cowboy . The New York that had nurtured immigrants between 1880 and 1920, however, was not fully eclipsed from American cultural discourse at this time.

John Schlesinger's 1969 Hollywood film Midnight Cowboy allegorically registers and articulates three of the film's broad historical contexts. In deterritorializing the figure of the cowboy, the film narrative allegorizes, simultaneously, the crisis of U. S. imperial nationalism produced by the war in Vietnam; an emerging gay liberation movement's challenge to traditional forms of heterosexual — and national — masculinity; and the moment of global capitalist crisis and restructuring which severely threatened U. S. control of the world economy. Ultimately, the film dialectically, allegorically \"maps\" the complex relation between these distinct, contemporaneous historical developments in a way that poses fundamental questions about the heteronormativity of traditional Marxian models of totality.

[Dustin Hoffman] desperately wanted to work with [John Schlesinger]. The question was whether Schlesinger wanted to work with him. Having seen Hoffman only as a rich preppy in \"The Graduate,\" the director needed some convincing. Hoffman had spent a lot of time with his scruffy acting pals Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall, drinking coffee at 2 a.m. at a seedy 42nd Street automat frequented by Ratso-like bums (\"We didn't call them homeless people then\"). When Schlesinger met him there one night, he found Hoffman in character, with a three-day beard, disheveled clothes and a Bowery accent. After a few minutes Schlesinger told him, \"Why Dustin, you do fit right in.\" [Jon Voight] didn't have it so easy. Unknown outside the theater world, he had to do a screen test opposite Hoffman with several other actors, including Michael Sarrazin. At first, Schlesinger thought Voight was wrong for the part, saying he looked like a blond Dutch boy. Sarrazin got the role, but when his agent held out for more money, [Jerome Hellman] was so infuriated that he slammed down the phone and persuaded Schlesinger to look at the audition tapes again. After watching Voight again, Schlesinger said, \"The more I see these tests, we may have been spared a terrible fate. I think Jon is our cowboy.\" TRUE GRIT: The film's street-savvy realism took deliberate effort on the part of Schlesinger. The director used hidden cameras in some scenes and in others re-created true New York tales of human misery.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Copyright Steve Schapiro Fahey Klein Gallery; STAR RISING: For Hoffman, \"Cowboy\" came after his success in \"The Graduate,\" which he viewed as \"a setback, because I was determined not to be a star.\"; PHOTOGRAPHER: Copyright Steve Schapiro Fahey Klein Gallery; THE CHOSEN TWO: Dustin Hoffman, left, won the role of Ratso Rizzo early in the casting process. Jon Voight was second choice for [Joe Buck].; PHOTOGRAPHER: LACMA; IN PROCESS: The stakes were high for, from left, director John Schlesinger, writer Waldo Salt and producer Jerome Hellman as they met to hone the film's screenplay at Schlesinger's Malibu home in 1968.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Copyright [Michael Childers]

\"Midnight Cowboy\" was undoubtedly the pinnacle of a career that would prove to be uneven. Like most directors who don't write, [John Schlesinger] was a captive to the material he was given to work with; unlike, say, Martin Scorsese or Robert Altman, he didn't put a distinctive signature on every film he made. There are more than a few \"unfortunates\" tacked on before Schlesinger titles, including his most recent films, \"The Next Best Thing\" (in which even Schlesinger's proven genius with actors couldn't help Madonna) and \"Eye for an Eye,\" a grisly thriller starring a miscast Sally Field. And there were too many television movies to mention or even recall.

ABSTRACTBy situating the film's tragic representation of homo- sexuality within the tradition of melodrama, this article questions whetherBrokeback Mountaintruly challenges mainstream taboos. LikeMidnight Cowboy,Brokeback Mountaincasts its radical subject matter within an ultimately conservative generic paradigm rather than camping it up in the manner of Andy Warhol'sLonesome Cowboys.