1964: Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars)

From the first minute, the unnamed Clint Eastwood character in Sergio Leone's first famous film is presented as supercool - cool meaning that you don't blink an eye while you're shooting people. I don't mean to critique this on moral grounds or offer a general discussion of gender roles: I find this kind of thing a bad choice on aesthetic grounds. (I think it's uncool to try to appeal to twelve-year-old boys of any age's idea of coolness.)

Once I got over this, however (which took about twenty minutes), I started to really enjoy this film which moves slowly and presents a series of excellent visuals - Wikipedia likens Leone's close-ups to Renaissance paintings, and they have a point. Shame these scenes have been parodied to death. (7)