GENRES

Two genres were especially popular during the 60s: the western and the spy-fiction genre.

 Westerns

A genre in which description and dialogue are lean, and the landscape spectacular, is well suited to film. Cowboys and gunslingers play prominent roles in Western movies. Often fights with Native Americans are depicted. In early Westerns, the "Injuns" are frequently portrayed as dishonorable villains; however, many "revisionist" Westerns give the natives more sympathetic treatment, as seen in John Ford's 1964 Cheyenne Autumn. Other recurring themes of westerns include western treks and groups of bandits terrorising small towns such as in The Magnificent Seven.

During the 1960s and 1970s, a revival of the Western emerged in Italy with the "Spaghetti Westerns" or "Italo-Westerns". Many of these films are low-budget affairs, characterized by the presence of more action and violence than the Hollywood westerns.
After the early 1960s, many American film-makers began to question and change many traditional elements of westerns. One major change was in the increasingly positive representation of Native Americans who had been treated as "savages" in earlier films. Audiences began to question the simple hero-versus-villain dualism and the morality of using violence to test one's character or to prove oneself right.

Spy movies

The peak of popularity of the spy film is often considered to be the 1960s when Cold War fears meshed with a desire by audiences to see exciting and suspenseful films. The espionage film developed in two directions at this time. On the one hand, the realistic spy novels of Len Deighton and John Le Carre were adapted into relatively serious Cold War thrillers which dealt with some of the realities of the espionage world while at the same time, the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming were adapted into an increasingly fantastical series of tongue-in-cheek adventure films by producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, with Sean Connery as the star. The phenomenal success of the Bond series lead to a deluge of imitators, especially from America.