Red seems to be a mag­net for angry bulls and great direc­tors. After all, it’s the col­or that seems to stand out more than any oth­er. Yasu­jiro Ozu, for one, made the jump to col­or movies very reluc­tant­ly late in his career and prompt­ly became obsessed with the col­or red. His pro­duc­tion team kept a box on set of small red house­hold things – a match­box, an umbrel­la, a teaket­tle — which he used to place in the back­ground of just about every shot. Jean-Luc Godard famous­ly bathed Brigitte Bardot’s back­side in red light for his first col­or film Con­tempt. When crit­ics com­plained that his fea­ture, Pier­rot le Fou, was too bloody, he quipped, “It’s not blood, it’s red.” And from HAL 9000’s unfor­giv­ing elec­tron­ic eye in 2001 to the buck­ets of blood pour­ing out of the ele­va­tor from hell in The Shin­ing, Stan­ley Kubrick built some of his most mem­o­rable scenes around the col­or red.

Edi­tor and design­er Rishi Kane­r­ia, who seems to be mak­ing a career out of point­ing out the col­or choic­es of auteurs, has just released a video called “Red & Yel­low: A Wes Ander­son Super­cut” that square­ly places Wes Ander­son among the ranks of cinema’s great crim­son-lov­ing styl­ists – from Ben Stiller’s sweats in The Roy­al Tenen­baums to the lux­u­ri­ous car­pets of his lat­est effort The Grand Budapest Hotel. As you might gath­er from the title of Kaneria’s short, Ander­son is also a fan of the col­or yel­low too. You can watch the video above. And you can watch Kaneria’s look into Kubrick’s use of red below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Big Deal About Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel? Matt Zoller Seitz’s Video Essay Explains

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

A Glimpse Into How Wes Ander­son Cre­ative­ly Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Dif­fer­ent Films

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

A good title sequence tells you every­thing you need to know about the world of a movie. As it unspools the cred­its for a giv­en film, it can also con­vey the movie’s mood, its sense of place, its story’s theme and even a few of its plot points. Saul Bass invent­ed the mod­ern title sequence with Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Gold­en Arm (1955). Con­sist­ing large­ly of mov­ing white rec­tan­gles on a black back­ground set to a jazzy score, the piece feels like a Blue Note record cov­er come to life – per­fect for a grit­ty tale about hero­in addic­tion. The open­ing was so strik­ing that Hol­ly­wood took note and soon title sequences became the rage, espe­cial­ly ones made by Bass.

Above you can watch a long com­pi­la­tion of Saul Bass titles, start­ing with Man with the Gold­en Arm and end­ing with Mar­tin Scorsese’s Casi­no (1995). Along the way, the mon­tage illus­trates the evo­lu­tion of style over the course of those 40 years, show­ing how titles grew in ambi­tion and sophis­ti­ca­tion. You can see titles for some great films from the yawn­ing spi­ral in Ver­ti­go to the mono­chrome crum­bling busts in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus to the abstract shots of neon in Casi­no.

But to real­ly get a sense of Bass’s tal­ents, look to some of the less famous movies he worked on. For Carl Forman’s The Vic­tors (1963), a bleak, big-bud­get anti-war flick, Bass com­pressed Euro­pean his­to­ry from the end of WWI to the dev­as­ta­tion of WWII into one mas­ter­ful mon­tage. At one point, still pho­tos of Hitler giv­ing a speech flash across the screen, each shot pushed clos­er in on his mouth than the last, before the sequence cul­mi­nates in a series of explo­sions. It’s one of the most con­cise and elo­quent retellings of his­to­ry in cin­e­ma. And for the zany com­e­dy Not with My Wife, You Don’t!, Bass cre­at­ed an ani­mat­ed green-eyed mon­ster of jeal­ousy play­ing a vio­lin. Say what you will about con­tem­po­rary movies, but there are def­i­nite­ly not enough car­toon green-eyed mon­sters of jeal­ousy these days.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Saul Bass’ Vivid Sto­ry­boards for Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus (1960)

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.