In 1970, 'Midnight Cowboy' achieved a feat that will likely never be repeated: it won the Academy Award for Best Picture while carrying an X rating. The film, which tells the gritty story of a naive Texan (Jon Voight) who moves to New York to become a hustler and befriends a con man (Dustin Hoffman), was given the X rating due to its adult themes and 'homosexual overtones.' At the time, the X rating was not yet purely associated with pornography, but rather with 'adults only' content. However, the film's artistic merit was so undeniable that it beat out more traditional films like 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.' A year after its win, the rating was lowered to an R without any footage being cut, as the cultural standards for cinema began to shift. It remains a symbol of the 'New Hollywood' era's willingness to embrace dark, challenging realism.