While Western movies have been around for almost as long as Hollywood itself, the genre wouldn’t be the same without a few great directors. Every cinematic genre is shaped by its most memorable voices. Sci-fi cinema would be completely different without Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, and George Lucas just like the horror genre wouldn’t be what it is today without revolutionaries like John Carpenter, Dario Argento, and Wes Craven. However, there might be no other genre as reliant on iconography as the Western.

From Clint Eastwood’s iconic Man With No Name to John Wayne’s silhouette in The Searchers, classic Westerns are filled with unforgettable imagery. As such, any look back on the history of the Western has to take into account the directors who defined the unique look of the genre. These include directors like Howard Hawks and John Ford, who created the archetypical early Westerns, as well as revolutionaries like Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, who threw out the rule book and started over.

10. Don Siegel

While Don Siegel might be best known for Dirty Harry and its impact on the cop thriller genre, the helmer was also an accomplished director of Westerns. Perhaps most notably, Siegel directed 1976’s elegiac The Shootist. John Wayne’s final movie, The Shootist was a moving deconstruction of the actor’s earlier roles that offered a darker spin on his usual heroism. Siegel also directed the haunting Clint Eastwood vehicle The Beguiled, as well as the underrated Two Mules For Sister Sara. While The Beguiled was remade by Sofia Coppola in 2017, this re-imagining failed to recapture the original movie’s unique atmosphere.

9. The Coen Brothers

While the Coen Brothers were comparatively late arrivals in the history of the Western, the filmmakers still managed to make their mark on the genre. Their darkly comic anthology movie The Ballad of Buster Scruggs remains underrated, while 2010’s True Grit is a rare remake that arguably outclasses the original movie. However, it is 2007’s No Country for Old Men that stands out as their Western masterpiece. Bleak, brutal, and brilliant, this Cormac McCarthy adaptation might be the new millennium’s best Western.

8. Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood spent decades as the face of the Western genre, but the actor learned a lot on the sets of his many iconic Westerns. As a result, Eastwood was no slouch when it came to directing entries into the genre. From 1976’s The Outlaw Josey Wales to 1973’s offbeat High Plains Drifter, Eastwood’s contributions to the genre are as iconic as his earlier collaborations with Sergio Leone. However, Unforgiven is Eastwood’s best Western as a director thanks to its elegiac deconstruction of the genre’s tropes.

7. Anthony Mann

Anthony Mann is an underrated director who spent the ‘40s and ‘50s making numerous classic film noirs and romantic comedies. However, it was as a Western filmmaker that Mann truly shone. With 1955’s The Man From Laramie, Mann helped introduce Cinemascope to the genre, capturing the vistas of the Wild West with a more expansive lens than ever before. In the earlier Winchester ’73, Mann reintroduced viewers to an aging James Stewart as well as offering early background roles to future stars like Rock Hudson. Finally, with 1958’s Man of the West, Mann offered a classic Gary Cooper Western that Jean Luck Godard praised as a masterpiece.

6. Delmer Daves

While the 2007 remake of 3:10 To Yuma remains underrated over a decade after its release, this should come as no surprise to fans of Western director Delmer Daves. Daves spent decades producing consistently stellar, influential Western movies within the studio system but is rarely listed among the genre’s most notable contributors. While 1950’s Broken Arrow is more than a little problematic, it was notable for being an early sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans in the genre. Meanwhile, the original 3:10 To Yuma was a morally complex, propulsive thriller, while The Hanging Tree was another equally underrated Western from Daves.

5. John Ford

For Western fans, John Ford needs no introduction. From 1939’s Stagecoach to 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the legendary director made some of the genre’s most acclaimed masterpieces. However, Ford also directed The Searchers, a moving, morally ambiguous exploration of the Western’s problematic themes. Less simplistic in its portrayal of good and evil than many earlier entries into the genre, Wayne’s role in The Searchers both defined the imagery of the Western genre while also upending its comfortable, familiar tropes. It was this subversive edge that made Ford’s many John Wayne collaborations so memorable.

4. Howard Hawks

Howard Hawks was one of the directors most closely associated with the classic Hollywood era and there is a good reason for this. With 1948’s Red River, Hawks brought together two of the genre’s biggest stars in a face-off between John Wayne and Montgomery Cliff. With El Dorado, Hawks gave young James Caan a star-making role alongside Wayne. And with the iconic Rio Bravo, Hawks inspired John Carpenter’s later siege classic Assault on Precinct 13 as well as many of Tarantino’s movies.

3. Sam Peckinpah

Sam Peckinpah’s brutally violent Western movies redefined what the genre could depict and brought a brutal edge of realism to the idealized Wild West. The vicious Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García and the softer, sadder Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid proved that Peckinpah’s Westerns felt uniquely gritty and realistic, but it was The Wild Bunch that helped usher in a new era of Hollywood. With a couple of gallons of fake blood, Peckinpah permanently destroyed the romanticized cowboy archetype for good.

2. John Sturges

While John Sturges might not be the most famous name on this list, his oeuvre speaks for itself. 1957’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral proved Sturges could make a classic traditional Western, whereas Bad Day at Blackrock added an element of darkly comic mystery to proceedings. Meanwhile, The Magnificent Seven is the standout testament to the director’s abilities. A playful but poignant re-imagining of Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven remains one of the best Western movies of all time.

1. Sergio Leone

Italian director Sergio Leone’s contributions to the Western genre began after its popularity had peaked in the ‘40s and ‘50s. However, the director’s original take on the genre was so memorable that Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name remains the archetypical image of the Western for many viewers. The first two entries into the Dollars trilogy are influential and memorable, while Once Upon A Time in The West is still underrated. However, it is the incomparable The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that cemented Sergio Leone’s status as the greatest Western director ever.