There are so many great ones--the ending of CHINATOWN, BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GRADUATE, SOME LIKE IT HOT but I am going with the lump in the throat ending to BEFORE SUNSET.
How about you?
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31 comments:
The Roaring Twenties
I am not even sure I have seen that. Have to look it up.
DR. STRANGELOVE has to top many lists.
I do adore the ending to SOME LIKE IT HOT... But also:
ALIEN RESURRECTION
THE BIRDCAGE
SNEAKERS
DR. STRANGELOVE
CASABLANCA
SOME LIKE IT HOT
THE USUAL SUSPECTS
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN
TWO FOR THE ROAD
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Jeff M.
THE SEARCHERS
WHITE HEAT
HARVEY
THE MALTESE FALCON
I'm sure I'll think of a hundred more as the day goes on.
I'm going with an obscure made-for-TV movie from 1967 starring a young Robert Wagner: HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION.
Let's not forget one of the greatest Y-chromosone flicks ever -- THE GREAT ESCAPE. Steve McQueen...motorcycles...Steve McQueen...baseball glove and bouncy ball...Steve McQueen...hum-along theme song...Steve McQueen!
I am surprised at how many of these where I can't remember the ending or didn't see the movie. The Wagner one is completely unknown to me.
Would have loved to have seen the recent HARVEY on Broadway.
Animal Kingdom has a corker of an ending that solidifies the film's themes as well as any movie I've seen.
Oh, good one. One of the scariest women on screen. Ooh, good blog question.
I preferred the ending of BEFORE SUNRISE.
Perhaps Before Midnight will be the best of all.
Tough one, Patti. Off the top of my head, I'd say "The Sound of Music," "The Shawshank Redemption," "E.T.," (yes, Jerry) "The Great Escape," "Planet of the Apes" (1968), "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "Operation Daybreak," "No Country For Old Men," "The Champ," and so on and so forth.
Good list. We need to do bad endings sometime soon.
Patti, that'd be even tougher considering that I almost always watch films with happy endings. I want to come out of the cinema hall feeling good and not depressed. Are there really many films with bad endings?!
Erich von Stroheim's Greed is my choice - but then McTeague, upon which it's based is perhaps my favourite ending to a novel. I say "perhaps" because I don't think there's anything more beautiful than the final paragraphs of The Great Gatsby.
I agree with you, Patti...I liked the entirety of BEFORE SUNSET better than BEFORE SUNRISE. Perhaps because I was a lot closer to the state of mind of the duo, and certainly their ages, when I saw both films back to back.
Shall have to go look for BEFORE MIDNIGHT notes...pretty soon, the fourth one will have to be BEFORE WE GET TO BED AT A REASONABLE HOUR...and Delpy is perhaps engaging in too many sequels.
Meanwhile, my favorite which hasn't been mentioned is ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW. Some endings save films...such as PONETTE and, to some extent, Tony Scott's biopic fantasy DOMINO (as with ODDS, an incredibly over the top setpiece, but ODDS is a much better film). WILD THINGS's (Neve Campbell, et al.) neat resolution certainly didn't hurt. The third Poitier as Virgil Tibbs movie, THE ORGANIZATION, comes to mind as one with the inevitable ending that still suprised the viewer that they would go with...somewhat similarly, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.
I certainly have some terrible endings in mind.
Another film definitely saved by its wonderful ending, pleasantly mediocre before the last fifteen: the Marx Bros., GO WEST.
Yes to WHITE HEAT and THE SEARCHERS.
Jeff M.
Agree about Gatsby. And although I have read McTeague, I have never seen GREED. Most films have sub-par endings for me. Because they try to sum it up, or stick in something overly sentimental.
Have never seen GO WEST. Not a big Marx Bros fan. Boo, hiss, I know.
The Searchers is my favorite western.
A philosophical question: what constitutes "the ending"? Is it the last line, the last scene, the last ten minutes, everything that happens after the climax of the story? My favorite last scene is from Moonstruck, the entire family around the kitchen table as Cher's character breaks up with one man and gets engaged to his brother and everyone ends up toasting "la familia."
Good question, Deb. I would say it is the last scene you take away from a movie. But sometimes the very last line like in SOME LIKE IT HOT or BEFORE SUNSET.
Patti, since a movie's "ending" may be subjective, let me submit the end credits to MONTE PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL.
(Since we are not talking about bad endings, no mention will be made of the end credits to THE HOWLING II.)
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and THE ROAD WARRIOR both have tough, cynical endings, and they would be tied for first place on my list of greatest "guy flicks."
I think the hardest thing to do is to end a comedy well. Anyone can set it up, but even Shakespeare flubbed ending his comedies. With that in mind, I would nominate TIN MEN. It's low-key, and you might not even put it together until later.
Oh, Patti, you don't need to like the Marxes (though you should give DUCK SOUP another go if you haven't) if I don't need to like SOME LIKE IT HOT, wherein Curtis and Lemmon are impossible to mistake for women, yet it's HILARIOUS HOW EVERYONE MORE OR LESS DOES...HA--digging in with elbow past the victim's lungs--HA! It's funny, doncha see. Um, no. PYTHON's "ratbags" are more convincing, and they are explicitly not trying. Nor MOONSUCK (koff), which I'm Italian enough to find an insult, coming as it does from a whole lot of non-children of Italy.
THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG.
Todd-Was makes it funny for me is that they look so little like women. If they didn't, half the laughs would be gone.
I have never seen Umbrellas, Mike. Shame on me.
Patti, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is the only movie where I actually cried at the end. You should make every effort to acquire a copy of it.
Patti, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is the only movie where I actually cried at the end. You should make every effort to acquire a copy of it.
The original LADYKILLERS. I'm suprised it has not been mentioned yet.
And since it already has been mentioned, DUCK SOUP has a pretty good ending. Well, at least they let the gags coming until the very last frame.
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