About one century ago, when the film became a medium that was written and theorized about, composers and music critics declared his music and his concept of the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ a model for film and film music analysis. Most often the common denominator was the “leitmotif”. In my essay, I would like to add another perspective. Given the fact that Wagner not only wrote the text and composed the music for his dramas but also supervised the (first) performances of them for establishing a firm performance tradition, I single out three measures of his work as a stage director and composer that relate to modern film music and sound analysis. First, Wagner coordinated the first steps of his main characters on the stage meticulously with orchestral figurations. His goal was to show the audience quickly the dramatic function or the development of a character. Second, Wagner as a composer thins out the thematic substance of the orchestral accompaniment when characters fight on stage. This has become a common measure in action movies as well. Third, performances under Wagner’s supervision displayed three layers of sounds: (spoken) dialogues, ‘background’ music and sound. His scores and the film soundtrack have a similar tripartite structure.