Indeed, you could say he invented “movie music,” the non-stop, leitmotiv-driven scoring, and 45 years after his death, it occurred to the creators of the first talkies that he was the ideal musical wallpaper to overwrought emotional storytelling (without pauses for applause), and, then, just a few years later, that he was out of copyright.

Therefore we get Tristan und Isolde in twenty films, from Joan Crawford hurling herself into the surf in Humoresque, to Lauren Bacall reconsidering her dressmaking career in Designing Woman, to Hedy Lamarr in Dishonored Lady fleeing a murderous blackmailer who has the Liebestod on the turntable, to Kirsten Dunst’s planet-destroying depression in Melancholia.

But the very, very finest use of Tristan in any film, score and staging and traditions, occurs in Something for Everyone, the only film directed by Hal Prince, who had also directed several operas. The movie concerns an amoral drifter, Konrad, played by Michael York at his sexiest, hottest and coldest, who arrives in a small German town and falls in love with the true star of the movie: theschloss of Neuschwanstein. By hook or by crook, he must possess her. But the castle belongs by entail to a bankrupt noble family. He must seduce the entire family (some of them seduce him right back), and if this involves three or four murders… well, that’s what it takes.

Therefore, at one point during the shenanigans, Konrad buys a cheap ticket to the local opera house, where Tristan und Isolde is being performed in a dog-eared production starring minor league singers of Wagnerian girth. We see the Eaglen-sized Isolde gesturing with her Brangäne in Act II, and cut to Konrad in the balcony, his attention wandering over the audience until he meets the opera glasses of exquisite Heidelinde Weis, the very bored daughter of a couple of nouveaux riches. And just as the blubbery Tristan dashes onto the stage, bang into his Isolde (the music of their encounter raging on the soundtrack—it’s the only fff in Wagner’s entire score) the glances of our spider and his prey meet, all curiosity and lust—and we can guess a thing or two about the doomed affair that will ensue. But not as much as we think we can guess.

For an opera lover (especially one also a bit in lust with vicious Konrad, as I certainly was at twenty), the glee of this use of the opening of the Liebesnacht is a highlight of the bloody comedy.