Taxi Driver 1976

American composer Bernard Herrmann's last film score was for director Martin Scorsese's (and writer Paul Schrader's) deeply unsettling, Dostoyevskian film noir, Taxi Driver–a portrait of urban alienation that's never been matched. In the slow-motion images of New York City as Dante's Inferno (steam rising into the air to suggest the hellfire below), the orchestral music is ominous and dissonant, a rumble and crash that rises up from the underworld. But Herrmann's other major motif is a slinky, smoldering sax theme that suggests the forbidden pleasures of big-city nightlife–bars and clubs, prostitutes and porno palaces–things Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) may himself indulge in, but that give him no pleasure. (In fact, they disgust him.) The soundtrack features a track in which Herrmann's music is played behind bits and pieces of narration from Travis's "diary": "Some day a real rain will come along and sweep all the scum off the streets." Unforgettable music, unforgettable movie. –Jim Emerson

Delightful classic title tracks, themes and suites from films that became legends during Hollywood's Golden Age. Performed with great style by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Grammy nominated conductor José Serebrier, and with Gramophone Award-winning American conductor Richard Bernas.

Swedish cinema became recognized for daring representations of sexuality with such films as One Summer of Happiness (1951), The Silence (1963), I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) and a wave of sex films in the late 1960s and 1970s. The association between Swedish film and sexuality shows up frequently in popular culture. From Taxi Driver (1976) to Mad Men (2007–2015), dirty Swedish movie references abound. Yet the connection has attracted little critical attention.