One of the most iconic moments in cinema history is in the 1939 all-time classic The Wizard of Oz, when Judy Garland’s Dorothy exits her house and realizes she is no longer in Kansas but is now in the land of Oz. The black-and-white that defined old Hollywood is left in the lurch, and in its place are bright and vibrant colors exploding out of a Technicolor rainbow.

Famed psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung said, “Colors are the mother tongue of the subconscious.” Colors are capable of evoking emotions, as in the crimson red blood splattered throughout the infamous bathroom scene in Stanley Kubrick’s dazzling and deranged adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining: a conscious choice that builds upon the creeping anxiety and horror of the supernatural hold that the Overlook Hotel has on the character Jack Torrance.

An image’s tone and color balance also has the power to transport an audience to a different time and place. For example, in Steven Spielberg’s WW2 epic Saving Private Ryan, the famed director and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński said in order to reflect the period, they wanted the film to feel like “color newsreel footage from the 1940s, which is very desaturated and low-tech." One of ways they achieved this was through bleach bypass, the choice to skip a process that removes the silver halides that naturally form on a film negative, resulting in a silvery look that reduces image saturation and brightness, and increases contrast. The effect can also create a more dour and cold feeling that fits very well in the noir genre, as seen throughout David Fincher’s misanthropic classic Se7en.

So how about we dive in and take a look at color in some of the films of the past year:

PASSING

It may seem counterintuitive to start with a black-and-white film, but in this day and age, creating a film devoid of color is a strong choice that shouldn’t be ignored.

In Rebecca Hall’s critically acclaimed feature film debut Passing, based on Nella Larsen’s novel of the same name, Hall reckons with her multi-racial past and the emotional complexities around passing—ideas that are not simple, or shall we say ‘black or white,’ but rather rooted in a moral gray where the answers are not as simple as they seem. In regards to her decision not to shoot the film in color, Hall told the San Francisco Chronicle, “The irony of black-and-white films is they’re gray, there’s nothing black or white about it, ever. And also, the abstraction of being able to play with shadow and light and point out the construction of race, that it is a sort of slippery reality… In black-and-white film I’m able to play with lighting states and play with exposure, and not do it with makeup, but do it with overexposed rooms, and white walls and white outfits.” This decision elevates the hard work of the cast and crew to underline the film's emotional complexities and narrative intricacies about an incredibly important subject matter.