Contextual Studies Journal

by David Lynch. In the 80s, the screen world became dazzling with color movies, but David Lynch bucked that trend with The Elephant Man....

Directed by Jack Gold. No matter how many times he changes his place, there are two things that do not change in Quentin Crisp's room:...

Directed by Douglas Sirk. The themes in Imitation of Life are two women bonding, a complicated mother-daughter relationship, and racial...

Directed by Charles Laughton. Night of the Hunter is one of the most thrilling, terrifying horror films I've ever seen and when you dig...

Directed by Otto Preminger. Frankie, Zosch and Molly live in the same building. While the room of the couple Frankie and Zosch was empty...

Directed by Carol Reed. The use of expressionist cinematography for black and white film, intense lighting and distorted “Dutch angle”...

by Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell. The film tells the story of Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven), who is attempting to...

by Jean Cocteau. With so much entrancing visual poetry, this is a charming romantic fantasy. In this movie, Belle's family is similar to...

Directed by Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied. Like all surrealism films, Meshes of the Afternoon has many puzzling details. When the...

Directed by Orson Welles. Welles's non-linear storytelling style - which was very new at that time, was exemplary, both in the style of...

by Josef von Sternberg. The film is based on the story of Catherine the Great (Dietrich) seizing power. The baroque visual style makes it...

by Jean Vigo.

The most interesting thing about the visuals in Busby Berkeley's works is the use of choreography as living motion graphics. As a fantasy...

Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Staged and choreographed by Busby Berkeley. The most glamorous and vibrant fantasies of early Hollywood were...

Directed by by Fritz Lang. If the plot of Metropolis evokes hope, its images stir fear in the audience through all three aspects of...

by Robert Wiene. I used to think that early movies always had very simple plots. It's not because filmmakers can't imagine complicated...

Directed by Georges Méliès. A trip to the Moon shows us the imagination of people in the early 20th century about the moon - an...