Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) – Cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli
“Once Upon a Time in the West”
Spanish Title: Hasta que llegó su hora
Year of Production: 1968
Director: Sergio Leone
Director of Photography: Tonino Delli Colli, AIC
Lenses: Angénieux 25–250mm T3.9
Film Stock: Kodak 5251 (50T)
Format and Aspect Ratio: 35mm 2-perf (Techniscope), 2.35:1
Viewed on: Blu-ray
Sergio Leone’s definitive Western combines classical American iconography with operatic staging, baroque camera work and an extraordinary command of depth across the widescreen frame.
The Film
Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone’s last pure Western, grew from a story by Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento and Leone, with the final screenplay written by Leone and his regular collaborator Sergio Donati. At its center is Jill McBain, played by Claudia Cardinale, a woman whose newly inherited property becomes the focus of three very different men: the outlaw Cheyenne (Jason Robards), the ruthless gunman Frank (Henry Fonda) and a solitary, mysterious figure known as Harmonica (Charles Bronson).
It was Leone’s largest production to that point, made on a budget several times greater than that of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), itself already unusually ambitious for a spaghetti Western. The added scale is visible throughout the film, not only in the sets and locations but in the confidence with which Leone allows scenes to unfold at his characteristic deliberate pace.
It is also the most fully realized of Leone’s Westerns. The narrative places its characters within a recognizable historical transition: the end of the old frontier and the arrival of modernity, embodied by the advance of the railroad. Around that idea, Leone builds a succession of unforgettable situations, dialogue, characters and set pieces. The result is one of the masterpieces of the genre, shaped by an unusual fusion of European stylization and the iconography of the classical American Western.
The Cinematographer
Once Upon a Time in the West was the second — and, in visual terms, the strongest — of the three collaborations between Sergio Leone and Italian cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, AIC. Their previous film had been The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); they would work together once more on Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
The production was shot largely in Spain, particularly in Almería and around Guadix in the province of Granada, with additional exterior work in Monument Valley and interiors completed in Rome. In visual terms, the film represents the culmination of the language Leone had developed through the Dollars trilogy: extreme close-ups, expansive landscapes, deep compositions and a meticulous control of rhythm and framing. Delli Colli later recalled that Leone knew his setups in advance and was extraordinarily precise about composition, sometimes insisting on many takes until the exact effect he wanted had been achieved.
Visual Style Analysis
Delli Colli’s lighting is strongly conditioned by the climate and the hard summer sun of southern Spain. Because so much of the production was photographed around midday, he often had to use very large lighting units even on exteriors. The aim was straightforward but demanding: reduce the enormous contrast between full sunlight and the shadows created by hats, buildings and other objects, while still preserving the hard, exposed character of the landscape.
Faces can therefore appear almost scorched by the combined intensity of sunlight and artificial fill. Yet the strategy gives Delli Colli precise control of exposure, especially in the American material, where the blue skies of Monument Valley contrast vividly with the reddish earth. The effect is not soft or naturalistic in a modern sense; it is classical, forceful and entirely appropriate to Leone’s larger-than-life treatment of the Western.
Color is equally important, or more precisely, the degree to which the palette is controlled by Delli Colli and production designer Carlo Simi. Delli Colli later described the Western palette in deliberately restricted terms: reds, browns, beiges, earth tones and off-whites, with wood, dust and sand-colored surfaces dominating the world. The choices are carefully coordinated for the camera and continue the visual refinement already evident in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The interiors, photographed in Spain and Rome, follow the same classical logic. Delli Colli relies on large, direct, largely undiffused sources that allow him to maintain enough exposure to hold interiors and exterior views through doors or windows at the same time — a considerable challenge with the limited latitude of late-1960s color negative.
Despite the hardness of the sources, the interiors usually retain strong contrast. Some scenes allow substantial areas of darkness, such as the tavern sequence in which Cardinale, Robards and Bronson first meet. Others use more even levels while still attempting to suggest sunlight entering through windows. The approach is unmistakably classical, but the control is rigorous and the light always serves the geography of the set.
As accomplished as the lighting is, the most distinctive aspect of the cinematography lies in the composition of Leone’s shots. As on the earlier films, Leone and Delli Colli continued to work in Techniscope despite the substantially larger budget. The format, introduced by Technicolor Italia, used a two-perforation 35mm negative frame and spherical lenses, producing a widescreen image that could later be enlarged to four-perf anamorphic release prints.
Techniscope reduced raw-stock consumption and made a 2.35:1 image possible with spherical lenses, but the smaller negative area also meant more visible grain and less fine detail than conventional four-perf 35mm. At the same time, the spherical format was extremely useful to Leone. For an equivalent horizontal field of view, it allowed shorter focal lengths than anamorphic photography, and therefore substantially more depth of field at the same stop.
For a broader explanation of the format, see Film Formats (IV): Technirama, Techniscope and IMAX.
With a 50 ASA stock and much of the exterior work photographed in strong daylight, exposures could reach approximately T16–T22. When Leone used the Angénieux 25–250mm toward its wide end, the available depth of field could be immense: foreground subjects and distant backgrounds remain simultaneously sharp even when a face is placed very close to the lens. Leone repeatedly exploits the resulting perspective exaggeration, turning faces into graphic foreground elements while preserving the landscape behind them.
Depth is not merely a technical by-product; it becomes part of the staging. Leone uses the full width of the frame with exceptional confidence, arranging multiple characters across different planes or creating elaborate visual relationships within a single composition. The final duel is perhaps the clearest example, but the same spatial intelligence runs through the entire film.
Zooms are also used repeatedly to move toward or away from details inside the frame, often in combination with pans, crane moves and other elaborate camera movements. The style can be deliberately ornate, but it is rarely arbitrary. Leone turns camera movement, depth and scale into part of the narrative rhythm, creating images that are both immediately spectacular and unusually precise.
Conclusion
The result is first-rate classical cinematography that can stand comfortably alongside its American models, even if the relatively small Techniscope negative can limit fine detail in some exterior material. The film can look rich, elegant and formal when Leone is consciously invoking John Ford, then suddenly become operatic, baroque and almost aggressively stylized when he gives full rein to the camera.
What makes the film exceptional is the tension between those two impulses. Delli Colli provides a disciplined, technically controlled photographic base, while Leone uses depth, framing, close-ups and movement to push that classical image into something unmistakably his own. Once Upon a Time in the West therefore stands not only as one of Leone’s visual peaks, but as one of the clearest demonstrations of how radically expressive widescreen composition can become when every plane of the frame is treated as active dramatic space.
ON FILM & DIGITAL
© Ignacio Aguilar, 2014. Revised in 2026.
This article is part of ON FILM & DIGITAL’s English-language cinematography reviews and essays.
These texts are not plot summaries or general film reviews, but cinematography-focused essays written from the perspective of a working cinematographer.
The Author
Ignacio Aguilar, AEC is a cinematographer / director of photography based in Madrid, Spain. His work spans feature films, television, commercials and technical writing on cinematography, with experience in digital cinema, 16mm and 35mm film, anamorphic lenses, large-format digital capture, lens testing and film-based workflows.
He is a member of the Spanish Society of Cinematographers (AEC) and the Spanish Academy of Cinema, a Sony I.C.E. Certified Expert and a Cooke SP3 ambassador. His writing has appeared in American Cinematographer and Camera & Light, and ON FILM & DIGITAL gathers his bilingual essays, technical guides and cinematography reviews.
For professional work, collaborations, lectures, workshops or cinematography consulting, visit his professional biography, selected works or contact page.
The Spanish-language archive is available at ON FILM & DIGITAL.