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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

"And they all lived happily ever after..."

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05:15 / 01.08.06

I realise that in the old-school gangster movies, the protagonist's death was demanded by the Hays code, and that's how it got to be a generic convention. But I don't think, even in the 1930s, many fans of these movies thought it was a happy ending or a triumph of law and order over decadent violence. Surely most of the appeal of classic gangster cinema is identifying with these incredibly glamourous, decadent, lawless dudes? I dunno, its ambigous, cause a lot of those movies were written by communists/fellow-travellers who were trying to sneak in a critique of capital, and sometimes capital was identified with the gangsters, but there are also films where the audience is pretty much invited to identify with the anti-authoritarian force of gangster personality. Don't you think?

miss wonderstarr

06:13 / 01.08.06

Yes, I think that 90% of the (1930s) gangster-movie narrative is about identifying with and cheering on a charismatic guy rising to power, and that it's pretty likely audiences at the time didn't suddenly distance themselves from that guy just because his 2nd in command betrayed him and he ended up in the flophouse or in a coffin. I know that I'm still rooting for Edward G Robinson when he's a down and out inLittle Caesar. So, yes I agree that it's a tragic ending in a way. I suppose the point I was trying to make is that these movies don't buck mainstream convention in that they do show "crime doesn't pay". What's funny about them is that the crime doesn't pay message consists of a wordy opening caption ("this movie was made to show the dangers of organised crime! a problem that faces us all! what are YOU going to do about it?") and a final death scene, whereas the middle section is all about how crime does pay ~ and pays plenty good!

There are, as you may well know, a few classic articles arguing that the gangster's rise to power is in fact entirely in keeping with one side of the American Dream (the self-made man, advancing over his enemies, rising through capital, driving himself from the slums to the big time) though it contradicts another side of that dream(that we're all in it together, united as a nation, equal and indivisible). The articles in question put it a little bit better than I just did.

11:37 / 01.08.06

There was an episode of real frontier history called the Johnson County wars where big landowners wanted their cattle to have the run of the open plains and they were opposed by smallholders who wanted to run small farms and fence off the land. The Cattle Barons had the smallholders all branded criminals , rounded up and shot, not to put too fine a point on it.

Many films were based on this, but the one which came closest to the spirit of the times by subverting genre conventions was called 'The Big Chill'

SPOILERS!!!!!!!

There was a hero in it who disabled his opponents by blowing their thumbs off so they couldn't cock their guns. There is a shootout between him and the main baddie at the end of the film. He manges to draw quicker than the baddie (of course), but the baddie has his men placed around the town with marksmen's rifles so the hero is shot down like, as they say, a dog. End of movie. That brought me down for about a week after seeing that.

Is this the most nihilistic anti-western ending of all anti-westerns?

Tryphena Absent

12:13 / 01.08.06

having done all of this, the weirdo gets made over as a princess and nabs the jock?!?!

At school tomorrow everything is going to be the same, it's just that a few children will look a bit different. It's okay because without it the film would be a complete misinterpretation of US society and that's what those films are about- Ferris Bueller and TBC are full of utterly disgusting statements about society and the closed-mindedness of teenagers but they're very realistic. The underdogs don't win unless they manage to get onto a level and then they're never underdogs again. The ex-Weirdo-Princess is going to be fine because she's on that level but that's how you know she's going to be okay. If she was still a weirdo she'd be hotter but she would only ever squeak.

13:59 / 01.08.06

I think (and freely admit I haven't seen this film for a long while) you could add American Beauty into this list.

The ending is a bit up and down, from him finally getting the teenage temptress alone, too not being able to go through with the seduction, too responding happily to the question, too the shooting. Makes me wonder is it a "happy" ending or not...

15:41 / 01.08.06

Dog Day Afternoon. SPOILERS

Sal gets it (and is probably better off for it) but Sonny, at the last second, puts the lie to a film's worth of desperate posturing and surrenders rather than face immediate execution. It's the System steamrolling a queer peg, or it's the ultimate victory of Fear over a man's attempt to construct his identity and destiny for himself. It's what actually happened. Whatever it is, it's as bleak as hell, and the only fitting conclusion to the Best American Movie Ever Made (although, for me, the watching experience is rendered far more positive by the knowledge that profits from the film rights allowed the real John Wojtowicz to finally fund Ernest Aron's transformation into Debbie Eden from prison).

paranoidwriter waves hello

15:56 / 01.08.06

(Threadrot question: [spoilers] someone once told me that when Sal gets shot at the end of Dog Day Afternoon, it was a reference to a theory about the JFK's driver being involved in his assassination. I'd assumed that it was just a re-enactment of how the real bank robbers were dealt with. Has anybody else heard anything about this, even if it is (erm) far-fetched? Please feel free to PM me, if you don't want to rot this thread further.)

16:29 / 01.08.06

I agree as regards The Breakfast Club. The group are never realistically going to hang out together and any other resolution would have appeared uncomfortably jammed in. We see these very same tropes played with again in the much later film "The Faculty". Here again a number of disparate students react in defiance against an authority figure and conformity. Notably to this discussion, once again the odd girl, this time "Stokely" played by Clea Duvall, ends the movie sporting a pretty ghastly makeover.

16:45 / 01.08.06

Sure, and the irony of "the Faculty" is that the force they're fighting all along is one which stands for rigid, thoughtless conformity. Always makes me laugh, that.

Now, the Grease issue is one ridden with gender politics and I would want to tread lightly but basically, whilst miss Dee would, I agree, seem most happy in her first incarnation, the subsequent 'make-over' just strikes me as a deely un-satisfying "Taming of the shrew" (now there's a crap ending) cop-out. Why should she have to change for him?

13:23 / 02.08.06

Why should she have to change for him?

But moments before the big Dee reveal Danny is moments away from turning from cool, trouble maker T-Bird to school jock in order to impress Sandy. Only her transformation is slightly more spectacular then him putting on a school sweater.

13:35 / 02.08.06

I've always thought there was something a bit suspect about how "It's a wonderful life" lauds the Jimmy Stewart character for constantly deferring on his own dreams and suppressing his own ambitions in favour of other people - who largely take his sacrifices for granted. I love that film, but at the same time I always catch myself thinking "No Jimmy, fuck them all. Just get yourself on a plane to somewhere that you want to go and leave all of this small town shit behind you!"

21:35 / 02.08.06

For that matter, why the fuck did Dorothy want to go back to that drab, boring farm in Kansas? Stay in Oz with the flying monkeys and the dancing munchkins and shit!

23:45 / 02.08.06

For a marvelous, fleeting moment, I read the above "munchkins" as "muthafuckins."

If only...

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