A one-hour playlist of movie songs
We invited several people in the film industry to share with us songs they discovered in movies and became obsessed with, songs that go hand in hand with the scenes they accompany and make them even more vivid and the cinematic experience that much more intense. The result is a set of stories and a one-hour playlist of movie songs recommended by film critics, directors, editors, and journalists (thank you!). We hope it keeps you company while reading or wherever your travels take you this fall.
Listen to the playlist on Spotify while reading the article.
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Cut Killer – Nique la Police (La Haine, 1995)

Mathieu Kassovitz made only one masterpiece in his career as a director: La Haine, a defining film both for modern youth and hip-hop culture, as well as for police brutality and protests against racial discrimination. What an incredible scene, inspired by Mikhail Kalatozov’s Soy Cuba, cuts through the middle of this film that hasn’t aged a single bit – starting in a DJ’s apartment, spinning records with speakers out the window, mixing Piaf with NWA, the camera flies over the streets and buildings, capturing the ineffable feeling of the neighborhood caught between ghettoization and absolute and irreverent revolt against the status quo and, above all, its guardians: the patrol. (Flavia Dima, Films in Frame)
“La Haine” is available on MUBI.
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David Bowie – Modern Love (Mauvais sang, 1986)
Everything has been erased from my memory: the scenes, the characters, the lines. Except for one color (red), one context (AIDS), one moment. When Bowie’s Modern Love starts playing on the radio, asserting its sovereign vigor over Serge Reggiani’s chanson, something happens – something that delves deep into the bodies and the air they breathe. Denis Lavant then starts dancing wildly, frantically, as if his chest would burst in a spasm both tragic and emphatic, containing the dizzying feeling of youth. With this endless tracking shot, Leos Carax inscribes the sick athlete’s body (sick with love, and not only) in the history of forms and reaffirms his status as a grand mannerist filmmaker, for whom excess is the only acceptable state of mind. (Victor Morozov, Films in Frame)
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Lana del Rey – Born to Die (Mommy, 2014)
In 2015, without ever being a big Lana del Rey fan, I found myself silently crying in the movie theater as Born to Die blared from the speakers and the end credits of Mommy rolled on the screen. No one dared to move; we all remained frozen in our seats, oscillating between hope and despair. Xavier Dolan has a knack for taking well-known songs, so popular that you grow tired of them, and putting them into a context where you feel that, for the first time, the lyrics actually make sense. Antoine Olivier Pilon runs to the finish line, and a syrupy song for rebellious teenagers suddenly manages to break the hearts of audiences of all ages into dozens of pieces. Oh, my heart, it breaks every step that I take. (Melissa Antonescu, Films in Frame)
“Mommy” is available on TIFF Unlimited.
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Queen ft. David Bowie – Under Pressure (Aftersun, 2022) // Paul McCartney & Wings – Let Me Roll It (Licorice Pizza, 2021)

Few things I love more about a film than a good needle drop, which is why I’ll cheat and choose two songs, each of them from what I consider to be the best films of last year. While it’s difficult to pick just one song from a musical odyssey like Licorice Pizza, there’s something truly magical about the scene where this dynamic and vibrant universe seems to stand still, and Alana and Gary – eyes closed, fingers touching – lie on a waterbed with the chords of Let Me Roll It flowing and flowing. Another musical in disguise that I keep coming back to is Aftersun, which is at the opposite pole in terms of mood to PTA’s film, whose soundtrack filled with all-time greats is crowned by Under Pressure. Wells’ film is such a visceral experience that it’s impossible for me, especially now, after seeing it four times, not to associate Queen’s song with that final dance. A needle drop like a punch in the stomach, but oh, it hurts so good! (Laurențiu Paraschiv, Films in Frame)
“Licorice Pizza” is available on HBO Max, and “Aftersun” is still available in theaters.
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Kath Bloom – Come Here (Before Sunrise, 1995)

There is something absolutely magnetic between Céline and Jesse, the two protagonists of Richard Linklater’s trilogy [with Before Sunrise (1995) as the first instalment], who meet on a train and decide to wander through Vienna together, talking about life, relationships, love, and death. But the moment they end up huddled in the booth of a record store, listening, without saying a word to each other, to the trembling voice of Kath Bloom, singing “There’s wind that blows in from the north/ And it says that loving takes this course/ Come here. Come here,” which conveys more desire than any of their conversations throughout the 105 minute-long film, blows me away. Come here is like an enticing invitation that neither of them can articulate, a way to beckon someone to be in your heart and soul, even if it’s just until you watch the sunrise together. (Anca Vancu, Films in Frame)
“Before Sunrise” is available on Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Google Movies.
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Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – I Put a Spell on You (Stranger than Paradise, 1984)

I heard it the other day, after many years, in the last place I would have expected it to be played – at the swimming pool. As in a fever dream, rather caused by the heat, it immediately transported me to the cold winter in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise, reminding me of the oversized black coat worn by the protagonist in the opening scene, the Chesterfield cigarettes she smokes (which I also smoked for a while after seeing the movie), the radio she carries with her everywhere, blasting Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and the hip cousin in a fedora hat (John Lurie) she visits in New York. Of course, it will always remind me of the person who introduced me to Jim Jarmusch’s films and that wonderful time in my 20s when I would meet people who didn’t look at all like the ones back home, even though they were also from out of town. (Roxana Dănăilă, Films in Frame colaborator)
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Harry Nilsson – I Said Goodbye to Me (The Worst Person in the World, 2021)
Ending the game is like changing the name of your favorite song… I often catch myself singing it. It’s the song that opens chapter 7 of the film, where Julie moves in with Eivind. I identify with the lyrics, with the melancholic mood, and because it suits Julie’s character so beautifully. The whole moment, through image and music, speaks to me about the cocktail of new beginnings: excitement + fear. Harry Nilsson was born in 1941, and his album Everybody’s Talkin’ was released in 1968. The Worst Person in the World (2021) is about my generation (people born in the 80s/90s in Norway, i.e. millennials ). And how it rhymes! Again and again, I find myself drawn to films (and music, for that matter) without a time stamp, free of association with a specific moment in history, with which you can connect emotionally and identify deeply, whenever and wherever you were born. (Alina Manolache, film director)
“The Worst Person in the World” is available on HBO Max.
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Sonic Youth – Tunic (Song for Karen) (Irma Vep, 1996)

In Vertigo (1957, dir. Alfred Hitchcock), between the scene where Scottie (James Stewart) saves Madeleine (Kim Novak) from drowning and the next one – where the two are at the detective’s house, in an oddly homely atmosphere – there is an ellipsis that has always intrigued me. Alex Leo Şerban quotes a piece that calls it the most dizzying film cut. The relationship between the characters seems to have changed, and the viewer must reorient themselves. I found a similar transition in Irma Vep (1996, dir. Olivier Assayas). In the second half of the film, when the audience is settled into a realistic reading, there is a scene where the main character, Maggie (Maggie Cheung), slips out of realism; it appears as though she transforms into the character she was hired to play, Irma Vep. She puts on the latex costume and sneaks around the hotel, spying, and stealing a necklace from an adjacent room. The scene begins with Tunic (Song for Karen) by Sonic Youth, but the vertigo occurs when Maggie exits the hotel room and leaves the melody behind, along with reality. The song continues to play in the background, competing with the squeaking sounds made by the latex, the hotel’s silence, and the sexual thrill of the entire scene. (Cătălin Cristuțiu, film editor)
“Irma Vep” is available on HBO Max.
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Play for today
It’s impossible to choose just one (!) song from just one (!!) film, no matter how picky, passionate, or nostalgic I may be. Still, by eliminating original songs, classical pieces, musicals of all time, and even those one-hour-and-a-half to two-hour-long music videos, I managed to narrow down my choices to the following 80s songs, with the mention that the titles that follow come only from the films I’ve come across (in one way or another) in the past week. So you can’t listen to Modern Love (by David Bowie) without thinking of Mauvais sang (1986, dir. Leos Carax), you can’t listen to Chariot (by Betty Curtis) without thinking of Goodfellas (1990, dir. Martin Scorsese), you can’t listen to In Dreams (by Roy Orbison) without thinking of Blue Velvet (1986, dir. David Lynch), you can’t listen to From Her to Eternity (by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds) without thinking of Der Himmel uber Berlin (1987, dir. Wim Wenders), you can’t listen to In Your Eyes (by Peter Gabriel) without thinking of Say Anything (1989, dir. Cameron Crowe)… and I don’t think you can (ever) listen to a track by The Renegades without thinking, with a smile or a sigh, of Kaurismaki. (Andrei Crețulescu, film director)
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DeVotchKa – How It Ends (Little Miss Sunshine, 2006)
I can’t think of a film that captures the sound of modern America better than Little Miss Sunshine (2006, dir. Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton). Reworked as the opening song of the movie (one of the best opening scenes in 2000s American cinema), How It Ends by DeVotchKa shoves lumps of desolation out of nowhere down your throat. Sharing the soundtrack, among others, with Sufjan Stevens’ Chicago (in my humble opinion, the artist’s magnum opus), what the song captures is that bittersweet taste of interstate roads and spaces that exist between nothingness, nostalgia, and wanderlust. How It Ends comes with a familiarity of a place you don’t belong to, but which you fully recognize just from the musical chords.
I take this opportunity to let everyone know that the film’s directors also directed the music video for Californication by Red Hot Chilli Peppers.(Dora Leu, film critic)
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Jeanne Moreau – Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves (Querrelle, 1982)

Jeanne Moreau singing Oscar Wilde’s Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves in Querelle: a lazy and soft song, melancholic and confident, performed by Moreau – playing an aging night artist – without much enthusiasm, seemingly out of habit (as Dietrich once did), but earnestly, for it is a threat, a declaration of love, and a premonition to all the old and new lovers gathered in the port of Brest, where sailors steal but mostly sell themselves; and they would all buy. And she loves too many. Na na na na, na na na na. (Călin Boto, film critic)

An article written by the magazine's team