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Watching Taxi Driver (1976) on videotape, I was struck by the fact that the treatment felt dated. It could have ended with the shootout and left the viewer to believe De Niro had died. Or it could have ended by showing Jodie Foster restored to her family and transformed by the experience. Instead, we learn what happened to Jodie through a letter in voice over, and we are shown De Niro, back in his cab, essentially unchanged.
In retrospect, it seems that a number of the best movies from the late 60s and early 70s had indeterminate endings, where the main character winds up in approximately the same kind of position at the end as at the beginning. It seems that those same movies if done today would end quite differently, and decisively.
The Graduate (1967), if made today, would probably end with the emotional high when Dustin Hoffman runs out of the church with the girl. But made when it was, Mike Nichols kept it going for several more painful minutes, as the two of them, sitting next to each other on the bus, begin to realize that nothing has been resolved, and stare blankly ahead.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), for all its action, humorously emphasizes that the main characters learn nothing. Their dilemma is that the west has changed and they haven't. And when they are caught by surprise and blasted to bits by the Bolivian police in freeze-frame at the end, they are the same happy-go-lucky, likable bandits they were at the beginning.
If Thelma and Louise had been made then and not now, it would have ended with them escaping off into the desert to an uncertain fate, unclear in their own minds whether they should have done what they have done, and unclear about what to do with the rest of their lives if they manage to survive. Instead, we have them take off dramatically over the cliff. And while no one would ever have imagined them doing such a thing at the beginning of the movie, it feels right at the end because we have seen them go through such irreversible character development.
Charly, a 1968 film about a severely retarded adult who through experimental drug therapy "awakens" into full intelligence, ends with the main character hopelessly returned to his original state. Awakenings could have ended similarly, with Robert DeNiro staring ahead, in the same deathlike state as at the beginning. Instead, it goes on for a few more minutes to show Robin Williams ready for a social awakening of his own.
Similarly, Rainmain, which could have emphasized stasis, instead focused on the growth of the relationship between the brothers, and the transformation of Tom Cruise.
Silence of the Lambs is another movie of transformation, as symbolized by the moth in the mouth shown in posters and ads. Jodie Foster matures and is in a sense liberated by her experiences with two serial killers. And in the final scene, Anthony Hopkins is quite literally liberated.
In the earlier period, people went through adventures and came out the same as they were before, and that was a source of angst, which was often the point of the film. (What's it all about, Alfie?) In current films, characters are fundamentally changed by what they go through, and there are clear winners and losers.
One could argue that audiences both then and now prefer decisive endings, that we selectively ignored and forgot the blank stare of Dustin Hoffman at the end of The Graduate, and focused instead on the glorious triumph in running out of the church. But the directors, even when telling similar stories and using some of the same leading actors we see today, approached their subject matter with an emphasis and style that now seems characteristic of an era that has passed.
Movie Endings -- what works and when?
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