Endings (Closure) of Movies–Necessary? Significant?
Jan 9, 2026–2196
See Narrative Structure
“America, as a social and political organization, is ocommitted to a cheerful way of life”–Robert Warshaw, Critic
Definition:
“The degree to which the ending/conclusion of a narrative reveals the effects of all the causal events and resolve all lines of action.”
(Resolving the interrelanships among the various characters).
One of the distinctive features of Classic Cinema is its obsessive orchestration of sexual difference.
All ther forms of differences (such as social class) are often subsumed by sexual polarity.
The dicourse of social class is submerged by the discourse of sexual difference.
Female POV
The possinbility of Female POV in Rebecca and Mildred Pierce.
In both films, the preoccupation with sexual differences displaces social class.
The convergece of sexual and class dynamics in narratives of the private and the public.
The final scene is often the most important.
Final scene is a privileged moment.
It can represents the director’s summing up of the significance of previous scenes.
Andrew Sarris:
We remembr not the happy or moral endings, but the beginnings and middles, during which all sortsof wickedly subversive mischief happens.
(“Tea and Sympathy” is perfect example)
Robin Wood:
Closure if a misleading term.
Usually it means the end answers to the beginnings.
For a character, ending might mean a crucia decision made, which points forward to new problems, new deveopments, new sruggles.
Closure can be neither finality nor restoratins of the same earlier order; it just means differenc.
For the spectatrs, this opens up raher than closes the narrativ, inviting reflections on hiw far the character has traveked and speculate o the character’s future.
Happy Ending: The most striking and persistent of all Classic Holly phenom
Often a mere “emergency exit” (Sirk’s term) for the spectator, a barley plausible pretense that the probems that the film has raised are nw resolved.
Even classic narratives that appear complete can be marked by irony and disonance that encourage the spectatr to take a critical distance.
Even if the characters seem trapped, the spectator is set free to become aware of the entrapment and the social conditions that produce it.
Movies with happy endings tend to offer their audiences warm, positive uplifting messages, but movies where the villains win reveal darker truths and somber messages.
Thrillers and horror films often have endings where the villains prevail, fitting thematically and providing cautionary tales.
Audiences are primed to enjoy movies where the good guys win, but some beloved films are ones where the villains prevail.
Thrillers and horror films can more often lend themselves to having endings where the villains win than other genres. In some cases, the villains in these types of films are metaphors for real-life challenges.
Having the villains win not only fits thematically with the genre of horror and suspense films, but it also enables films to tell cautionary tales designed to warn, and terrify, audiences and provoke discussions about these films’ manifest and latent meanings.
The endings of many mainstream Hollywood pictures strongly or partially reaffirm the monogamous heterogeneous couple, but sometimes the affirmation is troubled.
Then there are films, which just end, without resolving satisfactorily the narrative tensions
New Wave:
The looseness of the causal chain leads to endings that are defiantly open and uncertain.
Most of Godard’s films
Truffaut’s The 400 Blows: The freeze of Antoine against he sea (whereis he going? his future uncertain)
Chabrol: “Bonnes Femmes,” “Ophelia”
Rivette: “Paris Belongs to Us”
Relevant Films with Problematic Endings (in alphabetical order)
10 Cloverfield (bad end)
400 Blows, The, 1959
Abyss, The, 1989 (bad end)
Adjustmnet Bureau, The
Alice Adams, 1935
Apoca;yse, Nw (1979( (bad end)
The Bad Seed, 1956
The Birds, 1963
Black Hole (bad end)
Brazil, 1985
Broadcast News, 1987
Carrie, 1976, tricky (cynical)
Chapter Two
The Children’s Hour, 1961
Convesation, The, 1974, Coppola (good)
Countdown, 1968
The Crowd, 1928
Departed, The, 2006 (bad end)
Elephant Walk
The Eve of St. Mark, 1944
Fatal Attraction, 1987
The Fly, 1986
The Fortune Cookie, 1966
Fury, 1936
The Game, Fincher
Golden Compass, 2008 (bad end)
Hateful Eight, The, Tarantino (bad end)
Hunt of the Last October, 1990
I am Legend
Invasion of the Body Snatcher, 1956
Interstellar (bad ending)
It
Last Picture Show, 1971
Last Exorcism (bad end)
A Letter to Three Wives, 1949
Limitless (bad end)
The Magnificent Ambersons, 1942
Meet John Doe, 1941
Now You See Me (bad end)
Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986
Picnic, 1955 (bad ending)
Places in the Heart, 1984
Pretty in Pink, 1986
Pygmalion, 1938; My Fair Lady, 1964
Roxanne, 1987
A Soldier’s Story, 1984
Some Came Running, 1958 (great end)
Sorry to Bother You (bad ending)
Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962
Talk of the Town, 1942
Tea and Sympathy, 1955, Min nelli
Thelma and Louise, 1991
The Third Man, 1949
Woman of the Year, 1942
Wonder Woman
Elephant Walk:
The speech of old woman about it in book store, where Elizabeth Taylor works.
The Third Man
Ann (Alida Valli) just walks away, ignoring Holly Martin (Jospeh Cotten) and the camera.
