By the 1960s, old-school Hollywood was running on fumes. The star system was wobbling, TV was stealing eyeballs, censorship rules were cracking and a wave of international filmmakers were basically sending Hollywood a memo that said: “Catch up or get left behind”. Out of that chaos came what we now call modern Hollywood—the era of director-driven blockbusters, gritty antiheroes, experimental editing, genre mash-ups and audiences who expected more than comforting happy endings. These 21 films don’t just define the 1960s; they helped build the cinematic world we still live in today.