Songbook

On the verge of implosion, the band rages through a performance of their song “Circle Sky” in a psychedelic, politically trenchant sequence from director Bob Rafelson’s debut feature.

In Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens, the odyssey of a New Jersey transplant trying to survive in Manhattan is accompanied by the music of one of the Garden State’s most iconic punk bands.

In a pivotal early scene in this baseball classic, director Ron Shelton mischievously uses two contrasting rock tunes to comment on disparate versions of masculinity.

A ’20s jazz hit provides a rare moment of peace in Howard Hawks’s frenzied screwball comedy.

In the context of Sydney Pollack’s gender-crossing comedy, the mellow love theme sung by Stephen Bishop suggests that the plenitude of romantic possibility has the power to break down social boundaries.

A ballad from the 1910s becomes a precarious way station between life and death in Akira Kurosawa’s portrait of an ordinary man’s final days.

Bill Haley and His Comets’ generation-defining hit “Rock Around the Clock” comes through like a seismic, uncontrollable force in Paweł Pawlikowski’s meticulously crafted romance.

In Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Still Walking, the briefly heard Japanese pop hit that inspired the film’s title is both a portal to long-buried memories and a minor detail that resists interpretation.

The iconic band’s 1976 song “Radio-Activity” finds a perfect home in the final episode of Berlin Alexanderplatz, providing a musical correlative to the film’s interrogation of national identity.

The heartbreaking lament “Fare Thee Well” builds in resonance as it drifts through multiple scenes in the Coen brothers’ folk-fueled drama.

In Nagisa Oshima’s POW drama Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, a palpable but forbidden attraction achieves its most potent expression through music.

In La dolce vita, an upbeat tune by Nino Rota turns a dour party into a feast of ecstatic movement.

The King of Rock and Roll’s tender ballad “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” becomes a central motif in the Taiwanese epic A Brighter Summer Day, bringing to the surface unresolved feelings about love, national identity, and lost innocence.

One of the most iconic rock bands of the eighties provides the soundtrack to this poignant portrait of friendship and lost youth.

Heard three times in Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age drama, the R&B legend’s cover of “California Dreamin’ ” highlights the teenage heroine’s yearning for connection and escape.

Hong Kong pop icon Faye Wong made her screen breakthrough in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express, a film that also features her hypnotic cover version of the Cranberries’ hit “Dreams.”

The Platters’ impassioned rendition of the pop chestnut “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” highlights the irrevocable loss in Andrew Haigh’s marriage drama.

Mickey & Sylvia’s 1956 hit “Love Is Strange” injects a hint of lustful energy into a screen romance that is otherwise unsettlingly detached.

With its irresistible momentum and sonic crunch, “Easy Livin’” occupies a special place in one of the most celebrated sequences in Olivier Assayas’s filmography.

The Scottish band Simple Minds took the Breakfast Club theme song to the top of the charts. But its success—and its plea for loyalty—couldn’t save the group from its ultimate demise.

Performed by the late Barbara Harris, the final song in Robert Altman’s masterpiece is a provocative mix of genres and conflicting cultural resonances.