Clint Eastwood’s Favorite Western Movies That He Didn’t Star In, And How They Influenced His Career

• Clint Eastwood’s Westerns were darker and more cynical than the traditional Hollywood Golden Era Westerns, featuring morally ambiguous anti-heroes.
•  The films “The Ox-Bow Incident” and “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” are two of Eastwood’s favorite movies and had a significant influence on his own work.
•  These films introduced Eastwood to the idea that movies could explore weighty topics and feature unlikeable main characters, which he incorporated into his own Westerns.

Two of Clint Eastwood’s favorite Westerns had a big impact on his own work in the genre. The Western genre was waning in popularity by the time Eastwood became a movie star in the 1960s, but his work in the Dollars movie trilogy or Hang ‘Em High helped keep “Oaters” alive in the years that followed. Clint Eastwood Westerns were also darker and more cynical than the kind produced during Hollywood’s Golden Era, where the heroes played by the likes of John Wayne were almost always morally upstanding and honorable.

In Eastwood’s work, he often played anti-heroes like the Man with No Name, who was never afraid to cheat his supposed allies or shoot people before they drew their own weapons. Eastwood is one of the genre’s last real icons, and he signed off on Westerns for good with 1992’s Unforgiven. Eastwood is unlikely to return for an old-fashioned Western adventure – although 2021’s Cry Macho is something of a neo-Western – but his influence on the genre is undeniable.

Clint Eastwood Named The Ox-Bow Incident & The Treasure Of Sierra Madre As Two Of His Favorite Movies