One of the least explored areas of the cinema is film endings. This is a curious omission, since it seems to imply there is not much to say, as though the few observations that have been made about this matter over the years are sufficient. To the best of my knowledge, there are only three books in English devoted to film endings, and each takes a very different approach from the one in this study. Richard Neupertâs The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema (1995) is essentially about the way different sorts of narrative generate different sorts of closure. But Neupert only discusses a few examples for each of his four categories of narrative, and so he says very little about the overall phenomenon of the film ending. James MacDowellâs Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema: ClichĂ©, Convention and the Final Couple (2013) includes a lot more examples, but is limited in a different sense. MacDowell is interested in a specific feature of a specific type of film: the happy ending in Hollywood movies. To this end, he focuses for the most part, like Neupert , on narrative resolution. Finally, Cinematic Cuts: Theorizing Film Endings, edited by Sheila Kunkle (2016), is an anthology of theoretical readings of selected films and their endings, readings based for the most part on the theories of Jacques Lacan . Here the focus is primarily on films that lack a conventional narrative resolution, and some of the readings seek to tease out the implications of this. Since I am not a Lacanian, I cannot comment on the validity of the arguments put forward. Other readings position the spectator as analogous to a patient in a psychoanalytical session, which meansâfrom this Lacanian perspectiveâthat certain film endings are seen to have alarming effects. Both these approaches are utterly different from my project.
My concern is with the nature of film endings themselves. This means looking at where they are set, what they focus on, and how they are articulated, which includes a consideration of the complex of motifs, tropes and other elements that are blended together to create the sense of an ending. The other elements will frequently include some from the preceding narrative, but these will be incorporated into the ending in certain specific ways. In short, I wish to look at endings as endings.
Such an approach is an extension of my research into film motifs. Motifs, too, are an under-explored area of film studies. Whereas the motifs of genre (iconography) have received considerable attention, I am aware of only a few works that look at film motifs more widely. For example, Michel Cieutatâs two-volume Les grands thĂšmes du cinĂ©ma amĂ©ricain (1988, 1991) examines themes and motifs that occur across the Hollywood cinema. My own Hitchcockâs Motifs (Walker 2005) was intended to locate Alfred Hitchcockâs motifs within the context of film motifs generally.
Motifs are recurring elements of a certain kind in a narrative or series of narratives. Typical examples in Hitchcock include objects (e.g. portraits; jewellery), settings (e.g. trains ) and events (e.g. rain ). These elements are likewise found in films in general but, crucially, they also occur in film endings. Thus the focus of an ending may be on a portrait (e.g. The Woman in the Window , Fritz Lang , 1944) or a piece of jewellery (e.g. Madame De âŠ, Max Ophuls , 1953), or the ending may be set on a train (e.g. North by Northwest , Hitchcock , 1959) or in the rain (e.g. Four Weddings and a Funeral, Mike Newell , GB, 1994). And just as motifs can be seen to occur in patterns of meaning across films from different periods and countries, so can their functioning in film endings.
In a filmâs ending, however, something else comes into play: the motif expands its significance. For example, where the film ends with an object, there is often the sense that the object condenses what the film has been about: the seductive image of the portrait of the woman in the window, a portrait that led the hero to dream; or the extraordinary journey of Madame Deâs earrings, from items she could sell without regret to their final status as, to her, the most precious objects in the worldâwhich she has now given to the church. Where it is the location that seems most importantâas in endings set on a train âthe overtones derive from the nature of the setting: a train is not just going into the future, but also implies a fresh start, and in the last shot of North by Northwest Hitchcock also cheekily incorporates Freudian symbolism appropriate to a honeymoon . Endings in the rain , intriguingly, are nearly always happy: the rain is cleansing, therapeutic and romantic.
We might speak here of a dialectic: motif and ending work together to produce a new synthesis. I note in Hitchcockâs Motifs that motifs themselves are not simply recurring elements, they can become charged with meaning: â[T]he condensed, emotionally resonant signification typical of melodrama may be seen operating in many motifs. Viewed as melodramatic elements in a narrative, motifs serve to crystallise issues and preoccupationsâ (31). A motif at the end of a film is likely to function in this sort of way. It may reflect back on the filmâas in Woman in the Window or Madame De âŠâor it may imbue the ending with specific resonances deriving from its nature as a motif, as in North by Northwest and Four Weddings and a Funeral .
At the same time, endings are not constrained by motifs; they are also a subject in themselves. That they are expected to provide narrative resolution is only a part of the story. They are filmed in a certain sort of way; they often take place at a limited number of sites and deal with a limited number of events. In this study, I am focusing primarily on the sites (e.g. stations , rivers, lakes and above all the beach) because certain key locations have emerged as both popular and resonant in film endings. But equally I shall look at how the sites are used: the range of ways the endings are articulated at these specific locations.
Scriptwriter Michael Eaton has written, âendings have nothing to do with geographyâ (1993: 5). From the point of view of a scriptwriter, thinking of an ending purely in terms of plot resolution, perhaps this is the case. But from the point of view of a director, delivering a film in terms of images on a screen, itâs nonsense. Now that location filming is standard for exteriors in nearly all films, filmmakers have been quick to exploit the expressive potential of the landscape, and/or the resonances of such settings as stations , and an area where this can be seen vividly is in film endings. Literally thousands of films make expressive use of geography in their endings. Equally, there are recurring features in the use of these settings, features which help reveal the structural elements of film endings.
I use the term trope as well as motif. The concept of trope comes from literature, where it refers to a figure of speech (metaphor, metonym, synecdoche, etc.). It is this approach to âcinematic tropesâ that Gilberto Perez adopts in The Eloquent Screen (2019: 51â197). However, the term trope is now more usually applied to a widely recognised feature within either a type of film or films in general. In some cases, writers use the term fairly generally; thus an introduction to a book on the Gothic refers to, âtropes such as imperilled heroines, dastardly villains, ineffectual heroes, supernatural events, dilapidated buildings and atmospheric weatherâ (Spooner and McEvoy 2007: 1). However, these seem to be essentially character-types and motifs; I would reserve the term trope for a slightly different sort of recurring convention. First, I share Perezâs sense that a trope is always rhetorical. Thus, if a motif functions as a metaphorâe.g. a dilapidated building as a metaphor for moral decayâwe could speak of a trope. Equally, where a convention is so familiar it has an emblematic quality, such as the last-minute rescue in traditional melodramas, or the climactic duel in westerns, here, too, we have a trope. Tropes also include features that both structure and energise, e.g. the monster as the return of the repressed, or the double as the site of the uncanny. Other structural tropes would include the rise and fall of the gangster, or contrasts such as those between the daytime and night-time worlds of horror and film noir, or between the exciting but sinful city and the humdrum but virtuous country in melodramas. Some tropes are trans-generic, such as a thunderstorm used for dramatic effect, or a painted portrait that becomes charged with power over those who look at it. There are visual tropes, such as a closing shot in which the camera moves away from the characters: cued by context and (very often) the music, audiences know the shot signals the end of the film. In Hitchcockâs Motifs, âFallingâ (Walker 2005: 238â247) is a trope rather than a motifânot only does it function metaphorically but, involving movement, it is rhetorically slightly different from a motif. Finally, whereas motifs can become charged with meaning, tropes invariably are. At the end of a film, a sunset becomes a trope: it evokes the idyllic or the elegiac; or hints at nostalgia or loss.
I have already looked at film endings in terms of the blending of motifs, tropes and rhetorical devices in a chapter, âSteven Spielberg and the Rhetoric of an Endingâ (Walker 2017). Although my concern there is with the endings in the work of a particular director, I note the importance of thresholds , and likewise mention certain ending tropes and motifs that, like thresholds, occur in films generally, such as sunsets , voice-overs , and a tendency towards the theatrical in the use of space. This study expands on such ideas, and looks at the wider phenomenon of film endings. A close look at film endings over a number of years has revealed patterns, many of which seem not to have been widely recognised.
Critics have made a number of points about film endings. Raymond Bellour : âThe principle of classical film is well known: the end must reply to the beginning: between one and the other something must be set in order; the last scene recalls the first and constitutes its resolutionâ (2000: 238). But Bellour is talking about the structure of the film, which for me is a secondary consideration. Independently of whether a given film ending âreplies toâ the beginning, there is almost always more to be said about it as an ending. Similarly with endings showing the formation of the âromantic coupleâ. David Bordwell : âof one hundred randomly sampled Hollywood films, over sixty ended with a display of the united romantic couple â the clichĂ© happy ending, often with a âclinchââ (1985: 159). Again, however, this is a matter of narrative resolution. My concern is, rather, where and how such resolutions occur.
Similarly, we are familiar with the typical genre endings: the western hero rides away from the town he has âcivilisedâ, the gangster hero is shot, the musical hero and heroine celebrate their union with a dance, a show, a ritualised coming together. Thomas Schatz discusses such endings in terms of their temporary resolution ...