You likely couldn’t make a movie like 1971’s “Dirty Harry” today. Clint Eastwood confirmed as much while visiting the Cannes Film Festival for a 25th anniversary screening of his Academy Award-winning 1992 masterpiece, “Unforgiven.”

“It was far-out at that time, so I brought it to [director] Don [Siegel] and he liked it,” Eastwood said from the Cannes stage about the original “Harry,” a film that spawned four sequels starring Eastwood.

“A lot of people thought it was politically incorrect. That was at the beginning of the era that we’re in now with political correctness. We are killing ourselves. We’ve lost our sense of humor. But I thought it was interesting, and it was daring.”

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“Dirty Harry” tells the story of detective Harry Callahan, a determined man with an affinity for .44 Magnums and a growing frustration with bureaucracy. The film’s controversy was focused on its no-nonsense approach to criminality. Callahan was an unforgiving gunfighter, one with no interest in the motivations of criminals or the sob stories of those trying to kill him.

The film was a fantasy, essentially, an answer to the cultural movement in film and society to put the focus on the criminal rather than the victim. “Harry” launched a string of near-vigilante movies that swung the pendulum in the other direction, reminding the world of the victims of crimes and the people who hunt the same criminals we’d been rooting for on the silver screen for so long.

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Of the controversy surrounding the film’s central character and view of crime, Eastwood told MTV back in 2008, “I was told when I first got the script that other actors had liked it but had reservations about the political elements of it. But even at that age, I was not afraid of it. To me, it was an exciting detective story. It was a fantasy. Here’s a guy who is so dogmatic that nothing is going to stop him when his mind is made up.”

Some critics, such as Pauline Kael, suggested the movie was fascist in its view of the world, a notion Eastwood has always rejected.

“I didn’t care less. Somebody else called it a fascist masterpiece. People are always calling people names, the great right-wing conspiracy or the great left-wing conspiracy. You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him. [Director] Don Siegel and I were both very moderate politically. We didn’t think much of it. We just had a good time with it.”

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Related: Clint Eastwood Is Making Another Patriotic Movie

As for the film he’d gone all the way to Cannes to revisit, the director-actor was surprised at his reaction to his 25-year-old goodbye to the western genre. “I thought I’d just sit through the first five minutes, but after awhile I thought, ‘This isn’t so bad, so maybe I’ll stay for it,'” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I enjoyed it. I saw a lot of things that I’d forgotten.”

The “Unforgiven” script, written by David Webb Peoples, had been optioned by Eastwood in 1980, but it took 10 years for him to finally start making it. The film was dedicated to the two directors Eastwood had learned the most from, Don Siegel (“Dirty Harry”) and Sergio Leone (the “Dollars” trilogy). Those were two names that came up while Eastwood dissected his film and his directing style.

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“Sergio had a different way of looking at the size and scope of films. I learned a lot from him,” he said. “Don Siegel was extremely efficient. He was faster than anyone I’ve ever seen, but that’s because he thought faster.”

Eastwood’s own directing style has been called quick, lean and practical. He has been known to shoot fewer takes than other directors, and he never yells things like “action” on set.

“I like to always shoot the first take.”

“I like to always shoot the first take. I like to see…[the actors face] the first time it (dialogue) comes out of their mouths. If it works on the first take and you print it, everybody gets in that mood. OK, we’re going somewhere.”

Eastwood added that his inspiration for keeping drama and loud yelling off his sets came from his visits to various presidents; he saw how quietly and efficiently the Secret Service communicated.

The director even got personal and touched on coming up in America’s Depression era. “At [age] 5 or 6, you didn’t notice and didn’t know any different,” he said. “Once you got old enough to understand the time, you realize how much you appreciate [your parents] because they had to go through that.”

He continued, “Everyone thinks this last recession was bad, but they don’t know what it is like.”

“Unforgiven” may be 25 years old and “Dirty Harry” even older — but Eastwood and his practical artistry and distaste for political correctness are not going anywhere. He’s fresh off two critically acclaimed box-office hits, 2014’s “American Sniper” and 2016’s “Sully.” Next up is “The 15:17 to Paris,” a film based on the true story of how three Americans thwarted a terrorist attack on a train bound for Paris in 2015. The movie is expected sometime next year.

Eastwood also said in Cannes that he was open to returning to acting and to making another western.