The Italian director knew how to dig into the past but also create a new visual language.
no film school
By Jason Hellerman
November 5, 2025
I think one of the biggest hurdles every single filmmaker faces is how to find their own unique voice and visual style. The reason for this is that it takes some craft mastery to really diversify yourself from what others have done before, but also not to forget all the formative lessons that explain film itself.
Now, that might be one of the most daunting things to read, but you should know that every single filmmaker has had to face this hurdle...even the great ones.
Enter this video essay from The House of Tabula, which argues that Sergio Leone is in a class of his own as a director because he's not just a master of his own voice, but he successfully blended it with all of film beforehand as well.
Today, I want to go over three key lessons for filmmakers that are inspired by the video essay.
Let's dive in.
I think one of the biggest hurdles every single filmmaker faces is how to find their own unique voice and visual style. The reason for this is that it takes some craft mastery to really diversify yourself from what others have done before, but also not to forget all the formative lessons that explain film itself.
1. The Face is a Landscape
When I think about Sergio Leone, I think about the way he shoots people, particularly the way he shoots faces.
His auteur style is one of "grandiose scale and spectacle." But it’s how he achieved this storytelling voice that I think holds one of our most important lenses.
Leone frequently used some of the widest-angle lenses available during his era. This single choice had two profound, and seemingly contradictory, effects:
Deep Focus: It created an immense depth of field where
"almost everything that can be seen" became the subject. Instead of
just focusing on a foreground character, the entire panoramic landscape became
a living, breathing part of the frame.
Close-Ups: Leone's favorite visual subject was the human face. He used these same wide-angle lenses for his famous extreme close-ups. This meant the camera had to be physically right up in the actor's face, creating an "imposing" and intensely intimate feel that distorts the features into a map of emotion and grit.
Leone's frames are an emotional tool, and a lesson you can emulate.
A wide lens isn't just "for landscapes." Used up close, it creates an aggressive, unsettling intimacy. Think about how your lens choice makes the audience feel—whether it's the overwhelming scale of a desert or the proximity of a killer's eyes.
2. Image is Character
When it came to storytelling, Leone was a master of taking a genre and picking it apart. His Spaghetti Westerns "demythologized" the American Westerns of directors like John Ford. His approach, which the video explains better than I will, was rooted in Italian "Comedia del'arte." This style of theater relies on fixed archetypes identifiable by their masks and costumes.
Leone applied this directly to his films. His characters (Harmonica, Angel Eyes, The Man With No Name) are pure archetypes.
Because he used these strict archetypes, Leone could build on what came before him and put his own spin on how these guys actually functioned in a western.
There was also a lot of shorthand with the way they looked.
His whole process was "Show, don't tell."
So, when it comes to your own work, your character's introduction is everything. Their silhouette, their costume, a single prop (like a harmonica), or the way they walk into a frame can tell the audience 90% of what they need to know.
And you can also subvert the way they dress or are seen to create something new.
3. Master the Set Piece
The video makes a strong case that Leone could rival Alfred Hitchcock for the title "Master of Suspense." Leone's narrative structure is a slow-burning rise towards an explosive and climactic crescendo, which is best exemplified at the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
But a Leone film doesn't just have one ending, but as the video argues, a "collection of multiple crescendos."
I actually loved this point from the video because it broke it down like this: each ending is a "distinct block of scenes" or set-piece that functions as its own self-contained story, with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Think about that standoff I mentioned. You have three guys at the end of the movie in a shootout over gold. There's a clear beginning to it, where you see a guy digging up a grave, and then two others enter. A middle where they negotiate a standoff, and then an ending where it actually happens, and then a denouement where we find out where the gold really was...which is sort of the beginning of its own little story as well!
So what do you need to know as a filmmaker?
A simple plot gives you room to be complex in your execution. Stop rushing to the next plot point. Instead, think of your film as a series of self-contained set-pieces.
Own the real estate of "real-time." Make your audience wait. Wind them up, stretch the tension until it's unbearable, and then give them the release.
Summing It Up
Leone wasn't just telling stories of loyalty and violence; he was using the fundamentals of composition and story to make something totally in his own voice.
And now, we as filmmakers can take those lessons and use them in our own work, ro both reference the past and show people who are in the present.
That's what makes an art form like filmmaking so beautiful and so able to constantly evolve
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