Clint Eastwood in the context of "Live action"

A film genre is a stylistic or thematic category for motion pictures based on similarities either in the narrative elements, aesthetic approach, or the emotional response to the film.

Drawing heavily from the theories of literary-genre criticism, film genres are usually delineated by "conventions, iconography, settings, narratives, characters and actors". One can also classify films by the tone, theme/topic, mood, format, target audience, or budget. These characteristics are most evident in genre films, which are "commercial feature films [that], through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters and familiar situations" in a given genre.

The spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's filmmaking style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most of these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians.

The majority of the films in the spaghetti Western genre were international co-productions by Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, West Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia, and the United States. Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978, including nearly five hundred in Italy, which dominated the market. Most spaghetti Westerns filmed between 1964 and 1978 were made on low budgets, and shot at Cinecittà Studios and various locations around southern Italy and Spain.

A Fistful of Dollars (Italian: Per un pugno di dollari, "For a Fistful of Dollars") is a 1964 spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first leading role, alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, José Calvo, Antonio Prieto and Joseph Egger. The film, an international co-production between Italy, West Germany and Spain, was filmed on a low budget (reported to be US$200,000), and Eastwood was paid $15,000 for his role.

Released in Italy in 1964 and in the United States in 1967, the film initiated the popularity of the spaghetti Western genre. It is considered a landmark in cinema and one of the greatest and most influential films of all time. It was followed by For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, both also starring Eastwood. Collectively, these three films became known as the Dollars Trilogy, or the Man with No Name Trilogy, after the United Artists publicity campaign referred to Eastwood's characters in all three films as the "Man with No Name". All three films were released in sequence in the United States in 1967, making Eastwood a national celebrity.

Rawhide is an American Western television series starring Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood. The show aired for eight seasons on the CBS network on Friday nights from January 9, 1959, to September 3, 1965, before moving to Tuesday nights from September 14, 1965, until December 7, 1965, with a total of 217 black-and-white episodes. The series was produced and sometimes directed by Charles Marquis Warren, who also produced early episodes of Gunsmoke. The show is remembered by many for its theme song, "Rawhide".

Spanning 7+1⁄2 years, Rawhide was the sixth-longest-running American television Western, exceeded only by Wagon Train, The Virginian, Bonanza, Death Valley Days, and Gunsmoke.

The Man with No Name (Italian: Uomo senza nome) is the antihero character portrayed by Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of Italian Spaghetti Western films: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). He is recognizable by his sarape, brown hat, tan cowboy boots, fondness for cigarillos, and the fact that he rarely speaks.

The "Man with No Name" concept was invented by the American distributor United Artists. Eastwood's character does have a name, or nickname, which is different in each film: "Joe", "Manco" and "Blondie", respectively.

Sergio Leone (/liˈoʊni/ lee-OH-nee; Italian: [ˈsɛrdʒo leˈoːne]; 3 January 1929 – 30 April 1989) was an Italian filmmaker, credited as the pioneer of the spaghetti Western genre. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema.

Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots. His films include the Dollars Trilogy of Westerns featuring Clint Eastwood: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); and the Once Upon a Time films: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Duck, You Sucker! (1971), and Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

Antihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero or in two words as anti hero) is a literary term that can be understood as standing in opposition to the traditional hero, i.e., one with high social status, well-liked by the general populace, and given a particular role to play. Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions that most of the audience considers heroic, they continue because they must, not because they believe they are the right person for the job.

The "Racinian" antihero is defined by three factors. The first is that the antihero is doomed to fail before their adventure begins. The second constitutes the blame of that failure on everyone but themselves. Thirdly, they offer a critique of social morals and reality. To other scholars, an antihero is inherently a hero from a specific point of view, and a villain from another.

Inspector Harold Francis "Dirty Harry" Callahan (born October 3, 1930) is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Dirty Harry film series, which consists of Dirty Harry (1971), Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988). Callahan is portrayed by Clint Eastwood in each film.

From his debut, Callahan became the template for a new kind of film cop: an antihero who does not hesitate to cross professional boundaries in pursuit of his own vision of justice, especially when the law is poorly served by an inept, incompetent bureaucracy.