A bold statement but: there is no more important moment in a film than its ending.
Depending on the screenwriter and filmmaker, final scenes are a crucial opportunity to evoke a particular feeling from the viewer. There are the endings that are an extension of the movie you’ve been watching – a fitting full stop culminating with a memorable wisecrack or a symbolic visual emphasising the trajectory of the characters you’ve spent the last few hours watching.
Then there are the endings that like to startle you. These climaxes can drop a twist that pulls the rug from under your feet, or end on an ambiguous note designed to confound the viewer; they can pose more questions than reveal answers. While denouements such as these might leave people feeling short-changed, a skilful deployment of such an ending can scintillate and make you reassess everything you’ve just seen.
It was hard to pick just 23 film endings to include on this list. It was a fun opportunity to highlight some of our personal favourites alongside the more well known – so some of your top picks might not have made the cut this time around.
Below are what we believe to be a good selection of the 23 greatest final scenes in movie history.
23. Yi Yi (2000)
Eight-year-old Jonathan Chang is at the very heart of Edward Yang’s coruscating family drama Yi Yi, but his character, Yang Yang, spends much of the film in its peripheries – bearing witness to the sweet, sad and profound turns of the adult world without fully comprehending it. Only at the end, while speaking at the funeral of his grandmother, does he let loose with a shattering monologue. “I am old too,” says the child – a line guaranteed to make you crumble. LC
22. The Long Good Friday (1980)
The ending of British gangster film The Long Good Friday is as memorable as they come – but is boosted to best-ever status thanks to a towering performance from Bob Hoskins. As the film draws to a close, Hoskins’ Shand, believing he’s free from threat from rival gangsters, gets into a chauffeur-driven car – but discovers it’s been commandeered by assassins (hello, young Pierce Brosnan!). The gamut of emotions that crosses the cocksure Shand’s face as he realises he’s been bested – and contemplates the nasty fate that awaits him – is one of British cinema’s most formidable moments. As the camera fixes on his face for a full 60 seconds, you can practically see his life flash before his eyes. JS
21. The Apartment (1960)
The ending of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment perfectly weds the film’s duelling sensibilities – sardonic satire, and sincere romanticism. In the last few minutes, messed-up elevator attendant Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) runs back to Baxter’s (Jack Lemmon) apartment and thinks she hears a gunshot. It’s actually just a champagne cork, and the pair reconcile. They go back to their card game, and Baxter tells her he loves her. Undercutting the cliche at the last, Fran responds: “Shut up and deal.” An exquisite capper to an exquisite film. LC
20. Before Sunset (2004)
The depiction of romance on screen can make your heart soar or ache, depending on the situation. Richard Linklater did both with his Before films, a trilogy capturing the highs and lows of a relationship between two strangers who meet while travelling Europe. The peak of the series came at the end of the second instalment, which sees Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) flung back into each other’s paths in Paris after their initial chance encounter nine years before. While Jesse kills time before catching his flight home, the pair listlessly discuss their lives, slowly realising over the course of the film’s brief 80 minutes that they’re head over heels in love. At the end, Céline dances to Nina Simone, telling him: “Baby, you are going to miss that plane.” Jesse, unwilling to let Céline go for a second time, replies: “I know.” JS
19. The Thing (1982)
The ending of John Carpenter’s cult horror classic has been debated and pored over by fans for decades. Have MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David) managed to rid themselves of the monster? Is one of them an alien imposter? Whatever the answer – and people have gone so far as to analyse the vapour of their breath for an indication – it hardly matters in the end. We’re left with two men on the brink of death, sharing one final futile drink. It’s a masterclass in stillness and restraint, a wonderfully grim coda to the carnage that came before it. LC
18. The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974)
The Taking of Pelham 123’s doozy of a final scene is the perfect example of knowing when exactly to end a film. The gritty action thriller follows a group of criminals who hijack a New York City Subway car and make ransom demands to Walter Matthau’s police lieutenant, Zachary Garber. Throughout the film, one of the enigmatic hijackers – Robert Shaw’s Mr Blue – is shown to be suffering from a cold and routinely sneezes. This comes back to haunt him: when Blue is the last surviving hijacker, Garber, narrowing his list of suspects, questions him. He mostly slips his way out of suspicion and Garber leaves – only to hear a very familiar sneeze. The final shot shows Garber poke his head back into the room, with a knowing smile etched onto his face, as he realises he’s found his man. Cut to black. JS
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17. Monsters, Inc (2001)
Pixar films are notable for appealing to adults as much as kids – and are often guilty of making grown people cry. An early example of this was Monsters, Inc, whose ending packs a heartfelt punch that gets us every time. Having created an unbreakable bond with human child Boo, “scare king” Sulley is shattered after the door to her world is destroyed by the corporation he works at. The ending catches us up with Sully one year on, clearly affected by the idea of never seeing Boo again. That’s when his trusty sidekick Mike steps in: he’s secretly been restoring the door to Boo’s world and presents Sulley with the final piece. After slotting it in, he gains access, opens the door and hears her utter the name she spent the film calling him: “Kitty!” We don’t get to see Boo, but it doesn’t matter; Sulley does, and we see his reaction – a warm, large, comforting smile. This ending is a beautiful commentary on grief, imagining what it would be like to be granted the opportunity to impossibly reunite with someone who means a lot to you. JS
16. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Norma Desmond is ready for her close-up. The ending of Sunset Boulevard, in which Gloria Swanson’s faded screen diamond descends into a fantasy of former glory, is as classically devastating as they come. That the film ranks among the favourites of Donald Trump – and was screened at the White House during his first term as president – is a curious incongruity; its final moments are as damning and piteous a depiction of the ravages of fame as any put to screen. LC
15. A Serious Man (2009)
Joel and Ethan Coen have a knack for imaginative endings, whether that’s with wry, comic understatement – as in Burn After Reading, or The Big Lebowski – or bewildering ellipsis (as in Barton Fink). The brilliant and cynical A Serious Man – a parabolic tragi-comedy that casts Michael Stuhlbarg as a sort of modern-day Job, is a prime example of the latter. The film comes to an abrupt end in the throes of disaster: a black sky, tornado on the horizon. Few films would have the chutzpah to end on a note of such profound dread, but A Serious Man, cruel and knowing, nails it. LC
14. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Many of the best endings in cinema can be found within the western genre, and none capture the romantic tragedy of the west as potently as Butch Cassidy. As Paul Newman and Robert Redford charge out into a blaze of gunfire – one last, unwinnable fight – the movie freezes, as if unable to show us the inevitable. The image is one that sticks with you, poignant and timeless. LC
13. Citizen Kane (1941)
Often described as one of cinema’s greatest twists, Citizen Kane ends with a reveal: the cryptic word “rosebud”, uttered by newspaper mogul Charles Foster Kane (Welles) on his deathbed, was in fact the name of his childhood sled. Compounding this reveal though, is the image of the sled being fed into the furnace, its significance lost to the world entirely. It’s tragic, and brutal, and powerfully symbolic. LC
12. Planet of the Apes (1968)
Yes, it might have been spoofed to high heaven – and the poster for the film might spoil the twist – but the climax of Planet of the Apes remains one of the most memorable endings of all time. After crash landing on an alien planet overrun with, you guessed it, apes, Taylor finds himself imprisoned. However, the end of the film sees a free Taylor making a horrific discovery: the remnants of the Statue of Liberty, protruding from the sand. It’s a masterful final note, chillingly revealing that the planet they’re on is, in fact, a post-apocalyptic Earth. JS
11. The Truman Show (1998)
The Truman Show is an endlessly watchable satire about what happens when a person is filmed, from the moment they’re born, for a manufactured reality TV show. But it’s also a tragic tale of a character who’s a prisoner without realising – someone whose whole existence is a lie. When viewed on those terms, you spend the running time egging Jim Carrey’s Truman on to discover the truth. This is what makes the ending such an emotional fist pump: Truman takes to what he believes is the high seas to sail away to pastures new and, after unforgivable attempts to prevent him from escaping by the show’s creator, his boat crashes into the studio walls. A bemused Truman finds a door and leaves – but not before uttering his unwitting catchphrase one final time: Good morning – and in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.” JS
10. The Third Man (1949)
The ending of this superior noir would have surprised readers of Graham Greene’s novella. Carol Reed’s film follows writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) as he searches for his missing childhood friend Harry Lime, at much insistence from Lime’s lover Anna. However, Martins’s hunt yields a disturbing discovery: Lime was on the run for killing countless people after stealing and selling diluted penicillin on the black market. After the net closes in on Lime, Martins, who has developed feelings for Anna ends up killing his friend to spare him a life in prison, and the film’s climax sees one striking result of this: as he waits for Anna outside the cemetery, she walks towards him – and coldly goes straight past without acknowledging his existence. While the novel saw the pair happily walk off into the sunset, Reed’s denouement is a middle finger in the face of 1940s tropes that would commonly see the guy get the girl. JS
9. Beau Travail (1999)
The closing scene of the modern French classic Beau Travail is one of the great left-field turns in cinema. After what more or less amounts to a death scene, we cut to Denis Lavant’s Foreign Legion officer in a nightclub, dancing frenetically to Corona’s “The Rhythm of the Night”. It’s unreal, disorienting and completely mesmerising, and a pure distillation of director Claire Denis’s fascination with the body on screen. LC
8. The Searchers (1956)
There might be better John Ford films than The Searchers (we’d plump for My Darling Clementine and his nihilistic final film 7 Women), but the ending of his 1956 western, starring John Wayne as a vengeful civil war veteran hunting for his missing niece, is a subtle heartbreaker. Having returned his niece to safety after five brutal years, Wayne’s Ethan turns his back on the happiness occurring inside the house and walks out of the door, his Wild West surroundings engulfing him. In one simple shot, Ethan’s loneliness – and the uncertainty of his future – is underlined in striking fashion. JS
7. The Godfather (1972)
Another ending that really ought to have been diminished by the sheer multitude of parodies, The Godfather’s closing grace note is one of the most memorable scenes in cinema – and the only special effect it required was a closing door. Director Francis Ford Coppola was able to repeat the feat with the 1974 sequel, which featured an ending just as devastating – cementing Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone as a cinematic antihero for the ages. LC
6. In the Mood for Love (2000)
Wong Kar-Wai’s transcendent story of romantic yearning ends with one almighty swerve. The bulk of the film follows Tony Leung, and his intense emotional affair with Maggie Cheung, the wife of the man his own spouse is cheating on him with. After two hours of fraught and poignant courtship, the film jumps forward in time – to Cambodia, where Leung’s character walks through a temple complex, and whispers something unheard into a stone hollow. It’s oblique, enigmatic, and truly galaxy-brained, confounding this love story with a conclusion that defies expectation, or straightforward logic. LC
5. The Graduate (1967)
By the end of the 1960s, the world was ready for a different kind of cinema – and the New Hollywood era introduced a flurry of filmmakers ready to do exactly that. One such person was The Graduate director Mike Nichols, who, alongside John Cassavetes, John and Elaine May, to name a few, tore up the rule book. The downbeat ending of The Graduate was a sign of the changing times: as the overly persistent Benjamin Braddock whisks Elaine (Katharine Ross) away from her wedding, much to the anger of her family, the seemingly love-lorn pair run away and jump on a bus taking them on to an uncertain future. As the sombre melody of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” plays, their excited smiles turn to nervous frowns, their belief in their rash action fading with every second. JS
4. Casablanca (1942)
It may be the most iconic ending in the history of cinema – and one of the most relentlessly parodied. But the conclusion of Casablanca – Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) sending the love of his life (Ingrid Bergman) flying off into the night – is a triumph of classical Hollywood romanticism, a bittersweet reminder that an ending need not be “happy” to be utterly satisfying. LC
3. Some Like It Hot (1959)
“Nobody’s perfect!” says Joe E Brown, after cross-dressing Jack Lemmon finally removes his wig, informing him that his new bride-to-be is, in fact, a man. And yet, of course, the ending of Some Like It Hot is, really, quite perfect – an exquisite punchline to one of the 20th century’s best and most enduring comedies. LC
2. There Will Be Blood (2007)
There Will Be Blood begins in a deep, dark pit, and ends in a bowling alley; somehow the latter seems just as haunting as the first. Paul Thomas Anderson’s period masterpiece is a slow burn throughout much of its runtime, but the payoffs are huge and spectacular. In the film’s shocking final throes, oil baron Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) – now a decrepit and alcohol-addled grotesque – gets one final, sickly victory over Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), before bludgeoning him with a bowling pin. “I’m finished.” Has any film had a better denouement? Maybe just one… JS
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
I remember watching Stanley Kubrick’s space opera for the first time as a burgeoning film obsessive when I was 12. I’d recorded it off ITV and sat nose to screen, watching it on a TV that these days would be constituted as far too small. I was enraptured throughout, but especially so by the ending, an obscure representation of timelessness, favouring image and music over explanation. As an elderly Bowman (Keir Dullea) reaches out to touch the same monolith glimpsed by the monkeys in the film’s iconic start, a sudden cut reveals his transformation into a giant foetus, floating in space, as the sounds of Strauss plays. Of course I had no idea what was happening at the time, but It was as close to a spiritual moment I’d had – and a formative memory in my film-watching experience. JS
