Director: Sergio Leone

Sergio Leone directed only seven features, and the reputation rests almost entirely on five of them. The Dollars trilogy took the American western, filmed it in Spain with an Italian crew and an American television actor nobody wanted, and produced something the genre had not seen: extreme close-ups of eyes cut against enormous wide shots, near-total silence broken by Ennio Morricone, and a moral universe with no heroes in it.

Once Upon a Time in the West is the fullest statement of the method, opening with nine minutes of a windmill, a fly and dripping water before anyone speaks. Once Upon a Time in America, his last film, was butchered on American release and restored later to something close to his intent.

His collaboration with Morricone is one of the closest in film history, with the music frequently written before shooting so scenes could be staged to it. Almost every subsequent director working in scale and stillness has borrowed from him.