Name: Why Sergio Leone Played Music On Set
Uploaded: 2026-02-06T16:58:08.000Z
Duration: 9 min 19 s
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One of the things I love about movies is their ability to make reality lyrical.

In life, there's no score playing under your morning run on the beach except for the one you choose.

Yo, we're two hard motherfuckers taking out any punk ass.

Part of the reason we listen to music, I think, is to soundtrack our experiences.

A composer is never going to write for my life, but

I can look toward the sunset and tap into the deep longing in John Williams work, for example, or channel the alienation of Vangelis.

Haunting and somehow seductive score for Blade Runner.

You know, there's this movie from mid-90s called Phenomenon where John Travolta becomes a super genius with telekinetic powers.

Yeah, it's not that great of a movie, but

it has this scene where Travolta feels at one with the swaying of the trees.

And I guess because I first saw this when I was a kid, the film's great score by Thomas Newman became linked with that feeling of harmony with nature.

It might be silly, but sometimes I put it on and watch the trees rocking in the wind.

And the music unlocks a deeper feeling of contemplation.

We know music activates parts of the brain that regulate emotion, that it can help us concentrate, trigger memories, make us want to dance.

But the full effects of music on the human mind remain mysterious.

What's clear to all of us, I think, is that music fits so well with the patterns of thought.

It's almost as if that lyrical quality is latent in life or reality or both in film.

No one understood this better than Sergio Leone, the Italian director of operatic spaghetti westerns.

One of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived, Leone is probably best known for his Dollars trilogy, which made Clint Eastwood a star and reinvigorated a distinctly American genre with a rougher sensibility.

One that he cribbed from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, who was himself influenced by the classic American Westerns of Ford.

As his career progressed, Leone's style developed into something uniquely his own.

He refined his pacing and camera movement and composition, finding just as much to explore in a human face as a Western landscape.

But where he really separated himself, I think, is in his attention to music, how it works with the image.

And in this he had the very best partner.

Leone's collaboration with computer composer Ennill Morricone is arguably the most successful in all of cinema.

This comes down to the deep respect Leone had for Morricone's work, but

also his general feeling for how music should function in Film.

When Leone says that Morricone was his best screenwriter, he's not exaggerating for effect.

In movies, we all know the script comes first, then filming, then music is added in post.

Sometimes the filmmaker knows what songs they might want in the early stages, but

usually film scores are composed during editing.

But music was so important to Leone, to the rhythm of his sequences, that he had Morricone do his work before filming began and then design shots around those compositions.

The music for Leone really was a kind of script.

Okay, take a look at this scene from what I believe is Leone's best movie.

One of the main characters, Jill, is arriving in town to meet her new husband and his three children to start a new life.

In the previous scene, Jill's new family was massacred by a ruthless hired gun played by Henry Fonda.

We know that Jill's family isn't coming to meet her at the train.

And as the station clears out, she starts to realize that too.

Still unaware of the full scope of the tragedy, Morricone wrote this devastatingly beautiful theme for Jill, featuring a wordless vocal from Italian soprano Edda del Orso.

Now, when you watch this sequence, there's something very important to keep in mind.

Leone was playing the music for this scene on set while he was shooting it.

He timed the exact speed and movements of the camera and the actors to the music.

That sense of disappointment and foreboding expressed so well in the music is animating everyone in front of the camera and behind it.

The result is a perfect harmony of sound and image.

Sam, As stirring a moment as that is, and

it is, Leone doesn't need a sweeping crane shot to make the most out of Morricone's score.

I mentioned before that Leone has an obsession with human faces.

And like his others, this movie plays out in a series of extreme close ups.

With the music playing on set, the actors are granted a unique opportunity to access the profound emotions that the songs arouse in them, like we all do when we listen to music.

Except what they're listening to was written precisely for their character, precisely for that moment.

As Professor John Falwell put it, his camera is capturing introspection set to music.

And just as the actors get a unique opportunity, we do too.

We get the chance to stare into these faces as they stare at one another and glimpse the most minute expressions, that deep well of feeling hidden behind a steely gaze.

You know, human beings can be inscrutable, but not when you're this close.

Not when you and the person on the other side of the screen are hearing the same song.

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Subtitles ListPlay Video

Why Sergio Leone Played Music On Set

phenomenon

rhythm

opportunity

obsession