Watching Just Like Heaven the other day, it struck me that the endings to modern rom-coms are all essentially the same. The couple catch up with each other in a rose garden, on a rain soaked street, or atop the Empire Street Building, they kiss, the camera pulls out, and a Nat King Cole song leads us into the credits. To many viewers this might seem to be par for the course. Romantic comedy is traditionally one of the most formulaic of all genres, and you would expect the ending to be as unsurprising as the rest of the plot. This wasn't always the case, however. As much as I love to watch an aerial shot of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan locked in an embrace whilst Harry Nilsson croons over the top (and I do), I also miss the days when romantic comedies were more inventive and unexpected in the way they finally brought the couple together.
In the 1930s, the heyday of the screwball comedy, it was rare that we would actually witness the couple finally overcoming their inhibitions and 'getting it on', but we would instead have to infer it from some form of fiendishly clever callback or visual joke. Part of this was due to the moral climate of the times. The "production code" dictated that it was inappropriate to see an unmarried couple spending a night together, and even if they were married, only in separate beds. This posed a problem for 1934 screwball romance "It Happened One Night", the plot of which involved a runaway heiress and a newspaper report forced to spend a night in the same motel room. The (somewhat risque for the times) solution was for star Clark Gable to rig up a rope and blanket between the two beds which was henceforth referred to as 'The Walls of Jericho'. This achieved the dual goal of appeasing the censors, and setting up what would become a running joke. After the couple eventually realise they want to be together, the reunion is achieved through two very simple shots. One is a slightly befuddled motel owner reporting to his wife on a couple who made the unusual request of having a rope, a blanket and a toy trumpet. The next is said blanket ceremoniously dropping from said rope whilst a tinny bugle call plays in the background. No need for further explanation.
Examples of this kind of wit and ingenuity abound in classical Hollywood. Another great example being Only Angels Have Wings, the ending of which finds pilot Cary Grant setting off from his base while a desperate Jean Arthur begs him simply to ask her to stay and she will. The stubborn Grant responds that he "never asked a woman to do anything", and he flips a coin, telling her if it's heads she might as well stay. It lands heads, but this is not good enough for Arthur who watches tearfully as the object of her love walks away, seemingly indifferently to her presence. But on inspecting the coin in question she realises that it is in fact the double headed coin which Grant has been flipping the whole film. There's no need for schmaltzy dialogue here, just her ecstatic face as she sees him soaring into the sky is enough that we know everything will work out fine.
Perhaps the best example of the unexpected nature of these endings is to be found in another Grant film - "The Awful Truth". An estranged but still very much in love married couple wait up in separate bedrooms of a creaking house as a cuckoo clock ticks away the final hours until the divorce that neither really want will be official. Just before midnight we find Grant despondently pacing around wife Irene Dunn's bed as she watches helplessly, neither willing to make a move. Again, two simple shots resolve the seemingly impossible situation. The wind blows the door shut behind Grant, leaving him and Dunn shut in the room together. The cuckoo clock hits midnight, and we see the familiar figures of a wooden bride and groom trot mechanically out of the clock and begin to head back in. Only this time the tiny toy figure of the groom doesn't return to his own enclosure, but instead decides to trot after his wife in an ending which is totally impossible, but bolder, more surprising, and more economical in resolving the plot strand than anything current Hollywood could ever dream of. In short - utterly delightful.
So although filmmakers today may be much less limited in what they can show on screen, this doesn't mean that their imaginations need be more limited. Next time I see a Hollywood romantic comedy, I'm going to have my fingers crossed that the director has the courage to end it on more than just a kiss and a thunderstorm.
Hamish writes for Starstore, a leading purveyor of licensed movie, tv, games, comic and music memorabilia and a source of classic movie posters [http://www.moviepostersartprints.com]
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