Happy.Endings * Edith Head Altman * Mamoulian * MelodramaHappily Ever After, David Bordwell Few conventions of the Hollywood ccinena are as noticeable to its Producers, to its audiences, and to its critics as that of the happy ending. The device has achleved international fane:. the French and. the Japanese borrow the ‘term from the English, as did Bertolt Bracht and Mis collabora. tors for the opera Happy End (1929). The suagestfon, accord ingly, has been that the convention ccan be seen as specifically Anerfcan, as Irving Thalberg once implied vhen he pointed out that an ending that succeeds in gloomy Russia won't necessarily work here.! "In 1926, J. Stuart Blackton was even more chauvinistie: ‘The happy ending 42 the natural heritage of a happy, Benocratie nation...Let ue therefore not deride the happy endings, but give thanks £0 the aotion pleture For spread ing the spirit of Happiness and Optinian throughout ou Jand and for bringing Tope ‘and Cheer and a glinas of the Brighter side of Life to the whole civilized vorld.?, Tt seens to me that as a fixture of Hollywood filreaking of the classical period (1918 to about 1960), the happy ending is worth examifation. vant to look at how'the convention has funct foned Yn Hollywood's own discourse and in mainstream film, particularly those fills that pose problens for ‘the happy ending. Within the terms of Hollywood's ‘own discourse, whether the happy fending succeeds depends on whether it 1 adequately motivated. |The classical Hollywood cinena demands a narrative unity derived from cause and effect. The ending, as the final effect in the chain, should resolve the issues in sone 2 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP NO. 19 Part Two etintte fashion. Screenplay Shanuats. from 1915 £0° 1950 Insist thot the end of the narrative heute arise fron prior events. Since the most comon chain of rarrative enuse and effect Ts thet Of's damanteprotagonst who seats f Schfeve sone gpely the schfeve= rent. of the gon) ts a logtea} Conclusion of the actions Tt ts sizo a happy" endings. fhe happy nding, then, ts devenstble if 1¢ ontorms to canons of construction. len these canons are rot followed, the happy ending becones a. probien’ Screenplay nanuots eve dissatisfied ip orcad och donhany tnatngs.. Te charactors, writes Hance tarts mus be oxricnted na Logica and dranat that brfags' then happiness." The unmotivated happy ending a {tlure, resuiting fron lack of raft" ot the Interference of other hanes. Yet in a curious way, Hollywood's om discourse flirts with the un- happy ending -- not in its explicit precepts but in the very forms of argument employed. The screenplay manuals often enact the very struggle that 1s not supposed to occur in the fYIns. Screenwriters \rithe on the horns of the dilema, ‘twisting from advice about the need for unity. to the denand that the audience not be depressed. ‘The oddest, most dranatic exarple T know 1s Fritz Lang's essay, “appt ly Ever After," from which this article takes its titi Written tn 1948, the essay can be seen as attenpting to further @ certain conception of realism in ‘the postwar Anerfcan cinema. The bulk of Lang's essay attacks the Ganventton of the happy ending en several arounds. Rules exist to be broken. The audience Is not as ‘immature as producers think. The happy ending enters the history of the drana rather Tate and en- bodies a specifically Anerican optinism. After World Kar IL, however, no one can be so naively optinistic. At this point, the reader expects Lang to plead for the validity of the unhappy denouenent as both dranatically correct and morally salutory. "But wwe can watch the essay plvot in 2 single paraaraph: I believe in artiatte rebel- ton, 1 think new approaches, new forma are needed to re~ Tect. the changed world we lave in. But T-don't chink the only alternative to sugar is poison. Tf ve keep our fears ané eyes open, T think we shall discover that our audience 1a sonevhat atckened bby oupar but know ft 45 ore nourishing and far safer than arsenic. ‘Lang goes on to defend not the naive ending but the "affirmative" fending in which "yirtue triumphs through strugete."® That is, 2 motivated ending. In short, after brooding over the war's effects on our Ttves, Lang's essay recovers itself by means of an abrupt, unexpected...-happy ending. If the problem of the happy fending as 2 convention peeps. out syrptoratically from Hollywood's overt statenents, it energes quite nakedly in the films thenselves. T want to propose a small typoloay of ways that any ending in a classical film can be motivated, and then Took at ways. in which & few films have explotted the disruptive, Inadequately-noti vated happy end.” But first, tt will help to specify a Tittle more what an ending 1s. OPPOSITE: Donald Criap end Sara Allgood 1 OW GREEN WAS ME VALLEY.SEVENTH HEAVEN. In a classteal HoNlyvcod 11m, there are usually two concluding phases of the action, First. there 4s the resolution, hat Aristotle. called the Tuntying.”. This {s the Sverconing of the ebstacles the chievenent of the goal, the soTu- tion of the problems "Ih a Western, fuch as Winchester 93, the resolu: tion occurs Wien the hero vane quishes. the antagonist ina elinactie shootout, But in ost Classical Hollywood films there is'a final phase, vifch T shall call the eptlogua (this nay be guite short). The ep! Toque Functions’ to’ represent. the final Stability acheved by the narrative: the characters® futures ave settled, Frances Harion potnts out that the film should not. end untli "the expected penards'and penalties are eted...The final sequence shoul Show the reaction of the protagon- ist when he has achteved his. destr Let the audtence be satisfied that the fueure of the principals. ts settled."® “Both the resolution and the eptToque constitute the ‘ffin's endings and both must be motivated, "So, for example, Lin NeAdan in Winchester 73 kitts, his brother fo avenge the murder of hi father, and his victory ts antfefpated by earlier scenes: in which he 15 shown to be a better Shot, The film's epftogue, a very Shore. sequence, shows Lin Feturnitg to his friend and to, the onan who faves hiny and thts ts sotivates not only by earlier action but a1so hy the fact that he now has. the rifle that ne Tost atthe beginning Of the film. The last shoty whfch 4 1¢ uncaused resolution that borders on the miraculous." orzege's tracks in to a close-up of the rifle, precisely echoes the first shot Of the film and indicates the return toa stable narrative situation. Sone of the remarks already quoted from screenplay manuals indicate thet both resolutfons and eptloques can be motivated gener- ically. That 1s, because the film is of a certain type, we expect 1t to conclude a certain ways In classical Anerican cinena, the comedy, the detective film, the musical conedy, the rorance f1Tm, and other genres typically carry the happy ending 28 2 convention, white the gangster ffm and the film of social coment usually carry sone expectation of an “unhappy” ending. In sone eases, the genre can motivate an ending not adequately motivated by the Fittes {neraey ote, cot dey a film Tike Sh! The Octopus. (1936), 4 Marner Brothers. grade-t conedy, After an hour of fanciful plot convoluttons, the action {= re- solved by having one of the two bumbling protagontsts wake up to discover that the action of the film has been his drean. Other. genres spurn the "And then T woke Up" resolution, but tt 1s consonant. with our expectations of how a farce might end. From thts standpoint, an unno- tivated happy ending can arise from interferences across. genres. The best exanple of this I know is Fritz Lang's Woman in the Window (1988)." br. wanTey, & profestor of crimmotogy, has sent his fantly off for sunmer vacation. That night, Wanley meets a mstertous Wworan’and goes to her apartnent. for drinks. hen 2 man breaks in and attemis to kill him, Nanley kSTIs the intruder. He’ conceals the crime. “But since he is @ close friend of the District Attomey,. Wanley is forced to watch helpless- ly whtle the police patiently uncover the clues he left behind. The suspense ts characteristte of the policier fltm, espectatly one told fron fe crinimal's point of view, The film seers to resolve itself internally, when the police are satisfied that another man, Now dead, committed the crime. But the film 1s not satistied with this resolutton, since Manley 4s, stilT guflty and goes unpunished. There occurs an abrupt volte-face, Wantey fs avakened at hfs cTub; he has overstept; he has dreaned the entire story. But what worked 4m a comedy ike Shi The Octopus ts stridently out-of place in a crine thriller, and the resolution jars us by its triviality. The final scene, the eptlogue, is even nore Problenatic. hen lianley meets Another wonan in exactly the manner he had reamed of meeting the first, he stanmers and runs away. The eptlogue 1s both conte and trou- bling, because tt continues to violate the genertc norm and be- cause it suggests that Manley's drean could actually occur. Generic motivation can exist as the pressure of generic tradition on the particular film, There are also general dranaturgical sorts of motivation, and to of then are of particular importance for the ending. One ts causal motivation, which makes the f¥in's concluston’a logical consequence of earlier events.” The example of Winchester 73 shows how bath resol uut¥on and epitoque ray be motivated causally. The problenatic ending, then, tends to work against. causality. The principal way that ‘this happens 1s through chance or Sotnetdence. Coincidence 1s no stranger to Hollywood. dranaturay, and 1 sonetines achieves the status of a enertc convention (as in conedy or nelodrana)..On the whole, though, the orthodox practice ts to’ insert coincidance early in the film, nost often to trigger ‘the main‘actton; scenarists con- sider 1t unacceptable to Tet coin- idence enter so late as to resolve ‘the main action, Tt can, then, be a significant disruption 1f coin- efdence yields a happy ending. At its least distressing, this happy accident may be a sudden change of fearts og of the clase of Frank apra's: Meet John ‘Doe (1941). Nore ftarging Te the unease resolution that borders on the miraculous. In Frank Borzage'sSeventh Heaven (1927), both an officer and a priest assure Diane that Chico died in the war. Suddenly, Chico arrives, biind but alfve, and not only’ the timing but the officer's and priest's, error itself remains completely unexplained; we cannot Justify Chico's resurrection in causal terns. There is also the problen of the unrotivated happy epilocue. The action has resolved itself in an acceptably logical manner, but. the epilogue Jars with thet resolution. ‘One could argue that ‘the jocular, fhrowaway sunniness of the ept logue in Lang's Kintstry of Fear (1948) 4s out of Keeping with the grimess Of the story that preceded it. Similarly, it 1s possible to see fhe istotary eotTomie of Jom Ford's How Green Was My Vale (541), ch heaety tT she characters f fle past’ {n atenporal Purity, as 2 desperate attenpt to escape the bleak impasse of the resolution. The best, and most frfontening, example i hn fe red Mitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956), which conbines.an uncaused resolution with two epiTogues. Manny Balestrero ¥s accused by several witnesses of robbing an insurance office. He and his wife Rose try vainly to establish his, alibi. but they can find no one who ean testify to Manny's tnno- cence. Manny ts almost certain to be convicted until, at nis other's suggestion, fe prays. A Miracle occurs. Ae'he prays, the real criminal attempts another robbery and fs caught. Manny 1s, saved, but his plight, which Httchcock has presented through intensely subjective techniques, has taken its toll on his Wife. Rose has becone paranofd and Panny has put her fn-a'sanftartun. In fhe fin's eptToque, Manny goes to Rose and tells her he's free, but she is indifferent: "Nothing’can help me. No one. You can’ go now." She has completely withdrawn from iim, “Although a nurse comforts Manny, Hitchcock #1115 the scene with a sense of complete Toss. However grin, the epilogue is motivated causally. But now a second eptTogue (and what must be ‘the briefest happy ending in Holly- wood cinena) corrects all that went before: a title appears on the sereen assuring us that Rose was, ured and that Manny's family 45 now ving happily in Florida. In its final seconds, The Krona Han Pays outrageously ‘perfunctory obefsance to our craving for the triurph of the just and the good. We are tert not only dispirited but dissatisfied: A second sort of internal moti- vation {s that of coherent narra tive point of view. Point of view "The epilogue Jars.” Hitchcock's SUSPICION, with Cary Crant and Joan Fontaine, and THE WRONG MAN with Vera Mile Quayle. Henry Fonda, and Anthony‘n cinema ts 2 complicated matter, but for ny purposes here 1 shall take tt to include not only Heular techniques (e.g. y Opti cally subjective shots) but also the practice of focusing upon a character as the center of con= getoyaness for on action. in The Big Sleep (1946), for example, aN) ‘eenes-sFe presented through the conscfousnets of the detective Phitip Marlowe. He 1s present_in every’ sequence, and all’ the infor- tation the audience gets about. the narrative action passes through hin. Confinement to the detective's point of view is itself a generic Convent fon, but at the sane tine the restriction of point of view notivates the resolution inter= nally: Marlowe solves the mystery on the basts of hts. information. ‘The coherence of point. of view assures a unified resolution. The disturbingly happy ending would thus be one in which the ‘coherence of point of view 1s under- mined. The chief example would be Hitchcock's Susptcton (1941). Lina Aysaerth begins to mistrust hher husband when she catches hin in petty Tying and theft. When the: family” friend Beaky is mur dered, Lina starts to suspect that Johnny is guilty. Since there is ho reason to doubt Johnny's. quilt jn the smaller matters, {t.{5 easy for Hitchcock to motivate Lina's susptefon. Wore inportant, Hitch cock rigorously confines our knowledge to Lina's point of views Johnny is never seen outside her presence, When Lina learns that Sohnny has been inquiring about. Poisons, she and we assume that she Ys his next victim. One evening he carries milk to hers she accepts it; fade out. Sut this 1s not the resolution. “Lina awakes the next norming, and Johnny drives then along the coast. Tt appears that Johnny 1s about ‘to push her out of ‘the car, but ~~ here 1s the about- face ~-"he ts actually trying to prevent her falling out. The ‘resolution is accomplished: Johnny tells Lina that an unknown stranger killed Beaky, and that Johnny sought the potson because he wanted to commit sutcide. He apologizes to her and vows to wake a fresh start, They drive off together. The difficulty here 1s twofold. There 4s inadequate causal notive tion, Beaky's death at the hands of a conveniently anonymous stranger. More inportantly, the point-of-view has been ruptured. Since we never see Johnny apart from Lina, we have only had his word forall his earlier mtsdeneanors, and other sources have shown hin to be altar. There 1s no reason for Lina or for us to trust his explanations now. Or rather, only one reason: the fim stops. 6 ‘nvo, drastically opposed endings." tn Lang"e WOMAN IN THE WINDOW. The unmotivated happy ending 1s, of inportance both aesthetically and {deologicatly. Hitchcock's, Ford's, and Land's inadequate re- solutions and eptTogues constitute Poverful format devices. Part of their power Ties in their capacity to create narrative disunity. Now it is possible to argue that class~ ical Hollywood films cannot be wholly understood as unified art works, and to sone extent this is true.” Within a coherent narrative, there 15 also a drive toward accessory splendors and nonentary effects (this suggests that pop- lar film constitutes 2 rather Complex aesthetic entity). None- the Tess, the disruptive happy fending goes beyond the rather Vinited looseness characteristic of many Hollywood f11ns. Break owns tn narrative unity typically occur in the middle sections of the classical fitm, when the action 4s slackened by a song, gags, or scenes of relatively unmotivated spectacle. By the fila's end, however, we expect 2 fairly neat tying-up. The ending 1s typically, §f mechanically, a nonent of ‘Antegratfon. But the problematic fiIms 1 have mentioned derive their force fron swerving sharply off course, Pressing toward one necessary con- cluston only to deny tt. In most classical filns, the alternative resolutions of the action are only tmaained possibilities; in these ftins, the director repre~ sents the protagonist's impending death or capture or the breakdown ‘éward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett of a family with far areater vivid fess than he’ presents. the resolu~ ion of the difficulty. One might fay that films Ike You Only Live Once, onan fn the Window, Wrong Van, and Suspfcton present ‘bi, drastically opposed endings: ate'a Tocteal outcome of the action, the other an arbt trary coda,” This strateay introduces a probien of authorfal attitude akin fo frory but. much nore disruptive. For each type of rativation,. the unotf vated ending ca1Ts_ attention to the very conventions: that Ted us astray’ =~ the assunotion of con- Sistent cenre devices, of honove= neous causality, of coherent point Of view. Properly exploited, the dissatisfaction we feel with’ an arbitrary ending can force us. to recognize the conventions thet. rule classical cinema, Such # Ins can Secone what Stenhen Heath hes called tn Titerature “Tint t-works," ‘those works that exist within the Bounds" of Tegtbt 1fty-and clear consumption and nonetheless “real {ze a certain transgressive force 0 the extant that they stage’ the very terms of those Tintts. The Tinits, finally, are also Sdeologtcal. "The happy ending, as we saw at the outset, has often been explained as simply an obedtence to the audience's destres. “People,” write John Enerson and Anita Loos'in 1920, "do not want very tragic stories which depress then for the next. tventy-four hours. Hence the necessity for. happy fending tn most stortes."® "Sone writers appeal to the audience'ssense of fair play. The happy ‘ending, clains Frederick Palmer, 4s “nothing more or Tess than the balancing of justice, wherein retribution overtakes the gu!lty, and virtue and innocence are rewarded.*9 “This 1s close to the Convention of "poetic justice” as it appears in 17th and 16th century Titerary theory. Stont- Fieantly, sone of the filns I've cited were felt to be problenatic when they were made. Capra fs said to have tested several different endings of Meet. John Doe. Hitchcock claimed that he planned nore conststent ending for Suspicion that, studto executives ‘not let hin use. In "Happily Ever After," Lang adsits that. the dream ending of Honan in the Window was designed to avofd "a futile drearinggs whieh an audience would reject."10 “Because of the £1 Tem ers" skill tn dramatizing the situation preceding the cursory resolution or epilogue, the arbt- trary happy ending puts on display ‘the denands of soctal institutions (censorship, studies) which clair to act as the delegates of audience desires. The happy ending is there, Dut to Sone extent the need for it 4s denounced. This was, of course, one area hteh Gracht mined assiduously, as in Threepenny Opera's unnoti vated Fescue of MacHeath fron the gat lows: But as we want to keep our fingers clesn ‘nd you are people ve can't ‘isk offending We thoughe we'd better do ‘without this scene and aubeeitute Snetead a dtfferent ending. Stace ents 8 opera, not ‘ife, you'll see Justice give way before Hunantty. $0 now, to" throw our atory eight off coureey Inter the royal offictal on his horses Brecht points out that the deus ex hnachina functions to restore & SUBITIty rooted fn ideologicat Preferences. In Threepenny Opera, the characters instst on difference between art and Tife, “Wow nice everything would be," remarks Mrs. Peachun, "If these saviors on horseback’ always appeared when they were needed." No Hollywood 11m coes so far as to Place a line Tike this in a char- acter's mouth, but the uneotivated Finale can, within the confines of pooular ctfena, take on a socially critical edge.’ In several of the films T have mentioned, for in- stance, the spectator is asked to assume’an unusually critical position toward the Taw, and the happy resolutions and eb! Toques cannot entirely dispel an uneasi- ness about the workings of justice. In the context of Hollywood, it may be a productive act to drana- tize the problen of what we will accept as'a tolerable representa- tion of soctety. If, as Brecht. suggests, the happy énding guaran- tees "a truly undisturbed appre- cfation of the most intolerable condtttons," then the preblenatic happy ending may start to disturb that Happiness and Optintsm which Blackton egnst dered typtcal ly Anerican.12 Tt may be nore provocative for 2 fiIm to end happfty than unhappily 4f the happy ending flaunts the dispartty between what we ask of art and what we know of social Ife. Notes 1) John C. Tibbetts, ed» Introduction to the Photopiay ‘{Ghamee Wissfon, Kansas: Kationa Film Soctety, Inc., 1977), 122-23, 2) J. Stuart Blackton, *The Happy Ending,” The Notion Picture Director, 2, No.8 (Narch 1926), 3. 3) Frances Marion, How to Write and Se1l Fitm Stories (ew York: — Coviel, Frfede, 937}, p.52. Italic’ mine. 4) Fritz Lang, *Happtty Ever After,"'1n Roger Manvell, ed. Penguin Fitm Review, No.8 (13ée), ne 5) Thid., p.29. 6) Marton, pp.05-86. 7) Stephen Heath, Vertige du acenent (Parts: Fayard, 1974), P. ae a Ol ie 10) Lana, p.28. 11) Bertott Brecht, coltected Plays, Vol.2, £65, Raigh Panhetn ard doh Wit ett (New York Vintage, 1977), p.22s. 12) Ibid, p30. nappy resolutions and. eptlogues cannot entizely dispell and uneasiness about the workings of Justice,” Fonda and Sylvia Sidney in Lang's YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE.