The director developed such a distinct style that “Lynchian” became a go-to term for any sort of surrealism onscreen. These scenes from his work get to the heart of what that term embodied.

Lynch, who was born in Montana in 1946, was a writer, director and painter who studied at the American Film Institute. He first broke into the movie scene in 1977 when he turned his thesis project into his first feature film "Eraserhead," a black-and-white surrealist indie film that quickly gained notoriety as a midnight movie.