The "70s Ending"

My gut response:

Dark/bleak endings mostly want to go for the jugular.

As you already put forth, a "70s ending" seemed to want you to have something to take home to mull over and change your way of thinking.

80s movies: You get every materialistic thing you want.

90s movies: You learn schmaltzy lessons about how materialistic things don't matter... while still keeping the goodies.

My guess would be the difference is that the 70's had more bleak endings where the doom was carried out by some kind of system the protagonist could never overcome.  Rather than being just an existential bleakness, there was also an element of control... of being trapped.

I think Bailey has the best definition of the "70's Ending". A great example is Get Carter (1971). A great, stylish thriller with Michael Caine, the film ends in a way that seems out-of-the-blue and even extraneous to the plot of the film. Yet it serves as a perfect coda to the theme of the film. Still wish it had ended differently so we could have gotten sequels.

Bailey said perfectly everything I was gonna say.

Here're some examples of the "bleak 70s ending" anyway:  Chinatown, Network, The Conversation, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Passenger, The Night Porter, Rollerball, Beneath/Escape From/Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, Demon Seed, The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, Cabaret, Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Last Picture Show, Deliverance, Last Tango in Paris, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Slaughterhouse-Five, Shampoo, Kramer vs Kramer, The Wicker Man, The Stepford Wives, Soylent Green...Jesus, the list could go on forever.

The also tended to feel sweatier.

The "80s ending" was all about the "impromptu party set to the film's theme song".

I guess you could argue a connection with the rise of mainstream films as a commercial power. The late 70s/early 80s was the dawn of the blockbuster, after all. The average Hollywood movie became more tonally 'straightforward'and easily palatable to encourage wide appeal and repeat business, and bleak, cynical endings tend not to be compatible with either of those things. Sending people out of the theatre feeling good = word of mouth and repeat business = the kind of massive opening weekends that were increasingly becoming not only expected, but vital.

Also, I think what Bailey says is true about changes in the general culture. The 70s was the time of Watergate and the tailend of the Vietnam War, and the public were very used to the idea of shadowy forces controlling our lives. In the 80s, the culture became more conservative and focussed on personal gain. While some of that social paranoia returned in the 90s and 00s, the film industry had become a very different beast to what it was in the 70s; while the films had some of that darkness return, bleak endings had come to be seen as alienating to an audience and potentially harmful to a film as a moneymaking prospect.

these are just some theories, anyway - I don't think they cover all the reasons for the shift we've seen but they're the ones that spring to mind.

I think Peter Biskind's books should be read with a large dose of salt at hand, but two of the things he touts about the 70's are

1) The Studios were flummoxed by the Youth movement of the 60's and also by the large scale failures of traditional movie fare (Westerns, Musicals, Musical Westerns). So they in effect gave the keys to the Ferrari to the young Upstarts like Coppola, Ashby etc). They relied on the kids to show the way back to popularity (and $). And Lucas, Spielberg and Coppola certainly did that.

2) There was a core group of move goers in the 1970's that demanded and expected to be challenged by films. And who viewed film as an important cultural and intellectual phenomenon. And those movie goers were "taste makers" for a large percentage of the general movie going populace. Then something happened, so that by the 80's moviegoers wanted be infantilized by Blockbusters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bailey 

My guess would be the difference is that the 70's had more bleak endings where the doom was carried out by some kind of system the protagonist could never overcome.  Rather than being just an existential bleakness, there was also an element of control... of being trapped.

Best example of this is THE PARALLAX VIEW

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcnooj82 

My gut response:

 

Dark/bleak endings mostly want to go for the jugular.

 

As you already put forth, a "70s ending" seemed to want you to have something to take home to mull over and change your way of thinking.

 

80s movies: You get every materialistic thing you want.

 

90s movies: You learn schmaltzy lessons about how materialistic things don't matter... while still keeping the goodies.

00's movies: You don't get an actual ending. You gotta leave it open for potential franchising, sequels and spin-offs

The '70s were really the anomaly, though it seems natural to think of auteur directors with total control as the norm.  In fact, Hollywood developed as a studio system.  The creative control was with the studio heads.  What Biskind describes in his book really ushered in a phenomenal period in moviemaking, though it wasn't without its turkeys and misfires.  The '80s really began to shape the revived studio model that prevailed through the '90s, with star-driven "high concept" movies that "couldn't miss."  That's kind of continued, with bright spots here and there and the "indie" craze after Pulp Fiction, which also burned itself out.  But all the indies and the studios for that matter had an even more ominous development in store, corporate ownership.  I think that recent talk given by the head of Universal kind of puts a fine point on it.  I do think some studios are giving certain filmmakers total creative control, like a Chris Nolan, for example, which is a good thing.  Spielberg will not make a movie without having final cut. 

But back to the '70s ending, I had never really thought about it before but it's interesting.  I think Jackie Brown has kind of a '70s ending, when Max Cherry decides to stay in place rather than take on the lifestyle he's just tasted for the first and maybe only time in his life, and the possibility of a life with Jackie. 

The funniest example of '70s ending misuse is the 1980 B movie The Exterminator:  "Washington will be pleased."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leonard 

What, exactly, is the difference between a dark or bleak ending and a "70s ending?" Aren't they just two different ways of saying the same thing? Is there an element of rebellion and iconclasticism that other bleak endings lack? 

 

I think FIVE EASY PIECES is a film that defines this difference. Jack walking away from any connection is kind of a THE SEARCHERS ending, but uniquely bittersweet, dark, and rebellious.