“That’s life. Whichev­er way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you.” – Al Robert (Tom Neal), Detour

Film Noir. When you think that phrase, the mind is imme­di­ate­ly drawn to images of leg­gy ice queens, rum­bled losers in fedo­ras, guns, neon and cer­tain dead­pan cyn­i­cism. Film Noir wasn’t a self con­scious move­ment in the way the French New Wave was. It wasn’t a brand name like a Mar­vel super­hero epic. But it did tap into some­thing dark in the Amer­i­can post­war zeit­geist and became for a spell huge­ly pop­u­lar. It also cre­at­ed some of the most unfor­get­table images in film his­to­ry.

Film Noir hit its zenith in the late ‘40s, a time when vet­er­ans were return­ing home in droves after hav­ing wit­nessed unimag­in­able hor­rors. Under the weight of war trau­ma, men felt the brit­tle veneer of tra­di­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty – strong, sto­ic and dom­i­nant — crack and crum­ble. Film Noir tapped into this anx­i­ety. It’s no acci­dent that film schol­ars have called Film Noir the male weepy.

Above is a BBC doc­u­men­tary about the genre that lays out its rules. The movie fea­tures inter­views with direc­tor Paul Schrad­er, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins and George Pele­canos who both wrote and pro­duced The Wire. Check it out.

Rule #1: Choose a Dame with a Past and a Hero with No Future

The noir pro­tag­o­nist is inevitably some hap­less schmuck who is doomed, suck­ered to death or ignominy by lust, greed or some dark­er sub­ter­ranean self-destruc­tive urge. And inevitably the cat­a­lyst for this fall is a dame. Usu­al­ly blonde. Always gor­geous. The femme fatale is inevitably the cen­ter of the movie and fre­quent­ly its antag­o­nist. Film Noir blunt­ly lays bare what wasn’t dis­cussed in polite soci­ety; that the way for a woman to get pow­er in Amer­i­can soci­ety was through sex. The gen­der dynam­ics in this genre are the stuff that has launched hun­dreds of PhD dis­ser­ta­tions.

Rule #2: Use No Fic­tion But Pulp Fic­tion

Stu­dios rushed to adapt the pulp works of Ray­mond Chan­dler, James M. Cain and par­tic­u­lar­ly Dashiell Ham­mett, the first true hard­boiled writer. Hammett’s nov­els like Red Har­vest and The Mal­tese Fal­con are terse, vio­lent and cyn­i­cal; they con­tain the DNA of the Film Noir.

Rule #3: See Amer­i­ca Through a Stranger’s Eyes

The rise of Nazism in Ger­many forced hun­dreds of writ­ers, film­mak­ers and com­posers like Fritz Lang, Robert Siod­mak and Bil­ly Wilder to the sun-dap­pled shores of Los Ange­les. With them, they brought the aes­thet­ics of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism — cant­ed cam­era angles, stark light­ing and grotesque shad­ows. It was a look that merged seam­less­ly with the bleak, ele­men­tal sto­ries of Noir. They also brought with them a war-weary foreigner’s sense of the coun­try, one that saw the bru­tal­i­ty and cor­rup­tion of Amer­i­ca beneath the patri­ot­ic bunting.

Rule #4: Make It Any Col­or As Long As It’s Black

They wouldn’t call it Film Noir if the movies didn’t use a lot of black.

Rule #5: It Ain’t What You say It’s the Way That you Say it

The Hayes code lim­it­ed how bawdy and vio­lent Film Noir could get. So film­mak­ers got cre­ative, using off-screen space and lots and lots of euphemisms. Check out what Lau­ren Bacall says to Humphrey Bog­a­rt in The Big Sleep.

Speak­ing of hors­es, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a lit­tle first, see if they’re front run­ners or come from behind, find out what their hole card is, what makes them run.

It’s pret­ty obvi­ous she isn’t talk­ing about hors­es. And if you want to see just how las­civ­i­ous her deliv­ery is, watch the film above.

And if you want to watch more Film Noirs, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 36 Free Film Noir Movies, which fea­tures clas­sic movies by John Hus­ton, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Ida Lupino and many oth­ers. It’s part of our big­ger col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fritz Lang’s Cen­sored Noir Film, Scar­let Street, Star­ring the Great Edward G. Robin­son (1945)

Detour: The Cheap, Rushed Piece of 1940s Film Noir Nobody Ever For­gets

Watch D.O.A., Rudolph Maté’s “Inno­v­a­tive and Down­right Twist­ed” Noir Film (1950)

The Third Man: Film Noir Clas­sic on YouTube

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.

Last week we brought to your atten­tion a short video detail­ing the ways George Lucas’ clas­sic Star Wars draws from the samu­rai films of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, bor­row­ing cos­tum­ing and direc­to­r­i­al nods. But like any great artist, Lucas stole from more than one source. His ground­break­ing space epic incor­po­rates influ­ences as diverse as John Ford’s clas­sic west­ern The Searchers and the com­par­a­tive mythol­o­gy of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces, among many, many oth­ers. How on earth did Lucas syn­the­size such a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent gen­res into the uni­fied whole that is Star Wars? To begin to answer that ques­tion, Michael Heile­mann has put togeth­er the anno­tat­ed Star Wars you see above, “a work-in-progress mashup of Star Wars with many of its sources of inspi­ra­tion, play­ing as a fea­ture-length pre­sen­ta­tion.” As The Onion’s A.V. Club describes it, “the video illu­mi­nates the astound­ing breadth of mate­r­i­al that was bang­ing around in Lucas’ head as he assem­bled Star Wars. It’s the kind of thing that ought to be on a spe­cial-edi­tion Blu-Ray release but nev­er will be because of copy­right issues.”

Heile­mann, Inter­face Direc­tor at Square­space, edit­ed the film as part of his research process for an ebook called Kit­bashed, an exhaus­tive study of “how George Lucas and his artists per­fect­ed the process of trans­form­ing exist­ing books, comics, movies and ideas into the fan­ta­sy spec­tac­u­lar that is Star Wars.” The title of Heilemann’s project comes from a word that means “using exist­ing mod­el-kits to detail space­ship mod­els for films,” with some con­no­ta­tions of both the “mashup” and the “hack.” Lucas’ achieve­ment, how­ev­er, is much more than either of those words sug­gest, accord­ing to Heile­mann, whose jour­ney into the films revealed to him their “under­ly­ing com­plex­i­ty and seem­ing­ly infi­nite depth.” Far from attempt­ing to “reveal how Star Wars is in real­i­ty com­plete­ly uno­rig­i­nal,” Heile­mann hopes to show read­ers, and view­ers, that “the cre­ative process that brought forth Star Wars is noth­ing short of amaz­ing.”

Read more about Kit­bashed at its offi­cial site.

Via AV Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Star Wars is a Remix

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Ask film­go­ers to name their favorite Stan­ley Kubrick pic­tures, and you’ll hear many of the same titles over and over again: Spar­ta­cus, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clock­work Orange. These and the five oth­er fea­ture films Kubrick direct­ed between 1960 and his death in 1999 hold per­ma­nent pride of place as some of the most endur­ing and influ­en­tial works in the his­to­ry of the form. His fourth pic­ture, 1957’s Kirk Dou­glas-star­ring, World War I‑set Paths of Glo­ry, has drawn a good share of crit­i­cal acclaim, but noth­ing before it in his body of work has yet com­mand­ed the lev­el of respect asso­ci­at­ed with Kubrick and his cin­e­mat­ic lega­cy.

In 1956, he’d made the noir The Killing on the cheap; the pre­vi­ous year, he’d made the noir Killer’s Kiss on the cheap­er. But before even those came Fear and Desire, Kubrick­’s very first fea­ture, an exis­ten­tial war movie pro­duced in 1953 with mon­ey raised from his wealthy drug­store-own­ing uncle and pro­ceeds from a job shoot­ing sec­ond-unit on a doc­u­men­tary about the life of Abra­ham Lin­coln. You can watch the whole film, which has fall­en into the pub­lic domain, at the top of the post, or in a restored ver­sion, pre­ced­ed by a brief 1966 inter­view with Kubrick, right here.

By the time of Fear and Desire, Kubrick had already logged a cer­tain amount of film­mak­ing prac­tice direct­ing shorts. Still, he could nev­er quite get over his own per­cep­tion of the movie, which he made at age 24 fresh from his job as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er at Look mag­a­zine. He con­sid­ered the film “a bum­bling ama­teur film exer­cise” and “com­plete­ly inept odd­i­ty.” He lat­er, hav­ing burned the neg­a­tive, sought to pre­vent its screen­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion when­ev­er pos­si­ble. Yet it had its high-pro­file appre­ci­a­tors even at the time of release: “Its over­all effect is entire­ly wor­thy of the sin­cere effort put into it,” said the New York Times; “Worth watch­ing for those who want to dis­cov­er high tal­ent at the moment it appears,” said crit­ic-schol­ar Mark Van Doren. Though far rougher than every film Kubrick would go on to make, Fear and Desire offers sev­er­al moments that reveal him as the direc­tor we now know he would go on to become. Grant­land’s Steven Hyden, in an arti­cle on the movie, quotes an attendee at one of its par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­as­trous pre­view screen­ings who remem­bers that “there were gig­gles in the wrong places, and it all seemed over­done and over­wrought.” He also quotes Kubrick­’s full reflec­tion on the expe­ri­ence in a New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file: “Pain is a good teacher.”

Find Fear and Desire list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Killer’s Kiss: Where Stan­ley Kubrick’s Film­mak­ing Career Real­ly Begins

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hol­ly­wood has a long his­to­ry poach­ing from abroad. Ask Orson Welles, who along with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Gregg Toland, incor­po­rat­ed the look of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist cin­e­ma into Cit­i­zen Kane. Ask Quentin Taran­ti­no who cribbed much of Ringo Lam’s City on Fire for his break­out debut Reser­voir Dogs. And ask George Lucas who was so great­ly influ­enced by Japan­ese mas­ter Aki­ra Kuro­sawa that he lift­ed large chunks of his Hid­den Fortress for Star Wars.

Above is a video that (if you can get past the bro-tas­tic nar­ra­tion and man­gled Japan­ese pro­nun­ci­a­tion) neat­ly unpacks how Lucas’s sem­i­nal space opera owes a lot to Kuro­sawa. It doesn’t take too much imag­i­na­tion to con­nect a light saber with a samurai’s katana. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s robes look like some­thing that Toshio Mifu­ne might wear in one of Kurosawa’s epics. Lucas even uses Kurosawa’s trade­mark screen wipe. Below is an inter­view with Lucas where he describes how Kurosawa’s visu­al style influ­enced him.

Hol­ly­wood gen­er­al­ly has a bet­ter track record with bor­row­ing from for­eign film­mak­ing genius­es than actu­al­ly work­ing with them. Fritz Lang and John Woo were seduced into com­ing to Amer­i­ca only to be forced by over­bear­ing stu­dios into mak­ing ano­dyne ver­sions of their pre­vi­ous works. Kuro­sawa him­self had a deeply trou­bling expe­ri­ence in Hol­ly­wood; cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences, stu­dio pol­i­tics and Kurosawa’s auto­crat­ic direct­ing style – he wasn’t nick­named ‘The Emper­or’ for noth­ing – got him axed after three weeks from the 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox movie Tora! Tora! Tora!. Kuro­sawa took the blow very per­son­al­ly and, fol­low­ing the box office flop of his next movie Dodesukaden, attempt­ed sui­cide.

Yet the spec­tac­u­lar suc­cess of Star Wars proved to be an unex­pect­ed boon to Kuro­sawa. With his new­found influ­ence in Hol­ly­wood, Lucas man­aged to strong arm 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox, the same stu­dio that axed Kuro­sawa a decade before, into fund­ing Kage­musha. The movie proved to be a com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal hit, win­ning the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The film also gave Kuro­sawa the clout to raise the mon­ey for his last mas­ter­piece Ran.

Of course, Lucas wasn’t the only film­mak­er influ­enced by Kuro­sawa. Check out Kuro­sawa: The Last Emper­or — a doc­u­men­tary about the direc­tor fea­tur­ing a host of film­mak­ers who have been influ­enced by him, includ­ing Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci, John Woo and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

The Kuro­sawa Dig­i­tal Archive

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

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.