Master of the macabre, avatar of evil, intensifier of suspense, Hitchcock is the acknowledged king of the thriller genre he virtually invented. Hitchcock cheerfully poked ironic fun at the evil nesting inside the nicest of people. At the height of his career in 1950s Hollywood, his sophisticated blen

Classical, Elegant, Geometric, Hollywood gothic, Horror, Psychological, Tense

One of America's most critically acclaimed filmmakers for more than 20 years, Scorsese has won worldwide plaudits with a body of work that is informed by his Italian-American Catholic upbringing. As a young man, Scorsese decided to enter the priesthood, but dropped out of seminary after his first yea

Open-ended, Polychromatic, Surreal, Tense

The unwavering, demented gaze of a stray dog captures the detached observation that characterizes the raw, unsettling work of photographer Daido Moriyama. The dog is caught in strong shadows against a high-contrast background, highlighting its whitened eyes and its angular, rangy pose. "Stray Dog," M

Documentary photography, Dramatic, Gritty, Moody, Tense

The man who would be Papa began his life in 1899 as Ernest Miller Hemingway, born in his grandfather's house in Chicago, Illinois. His father raised him to be a sporting man, a man equipped to survive in nature, with a love of hunting, fishing, and adventure (Hemingway would cultivate this image in h

Bombast, Masculine, Modernist literature, Rough, Tense, The lost generation