Though both films have been given credit for helping to popularize opera, the idea of the art form they have popularized has profoundly damaged it in this country. The films have taught Americans a particular idea of what opera is, so that is the kind of opera Americans think they want. This is a large part of the reason audiences still flood en masse only to the war horses, and why they resist any directorial interpretation of those war horses that isn’t traditional.

So companies, well aware of what sells, offer endless iterations of operas like “La Bohème” and “La Traviata.” With little opportunity for people to experience other pockets of the repertory or production styles, the vicious cycle continues. It is no wonder that most opera in this country is musty and inert when popular representations of the art form make it seem as if that were the only option.

I was reminded of “Moonstruck” and “Pretty Woman” as I watched “Margaret,” which recently came out in an extended cut on DVD after a long battle over the release of the movie, which had a brief theatrical run in a shorter version last year.

“Margaret” — which tells the story of Lisa (Anna Paquin), a Manhattan teenager whose life enters a tailspin after she witnesses a fatal bus accident — revolves around opera, which is omnipresent both in the film’s underscoring and in the plot itself. The film is anchored by two scenes that take place during Metropolitan Opera performances of Bellini’s “Norma” and Offenbach’s “Contes d’Hoffmann.” The Offenbach scene stars a dream team of Ms. Fleming and Susan Graham singing the famous Barcarolle.

As in “Moonstruck” and “Pretty Woman,” these are serious date nights, with off-the-shoulder gowns. The productions are ornately stolid: far more traditional visually than the Met’s current version of either opera.

Early in the film the shimmering prelude to the first act of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” begins as the movie follows Lisa in slow motion. The same prelude plays again as Lisa leaves a small memorial for the woman who died in the bus accident, alternating her image with elegiac shots of traffic in the rain and an airplane moving through the sky.