{"id":13771,"date":"2016-06-18T12:04:19","date_gmt":"2016-06-18T16:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13771"},"modified":"2016-07-25T02:26:55","modified_gmt":"2016-07-25T06:26:55","slug":"br-happy-ending-the-1969","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13771","title":{"rendered":"BR: Happy Ending, The (1969)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HappyEnding1969_BR\"Film<\/strong>:\u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: Good<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Twilight Time<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0All<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0January 19, 2016<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Drama<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0After a mental breakdown, a bored rich housewife must decide whether to stay put or escape\u00a0from a dead-end marriage.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>Isolated Stereo Music Track \/ Theatrical Trailer \/ Liner Notes by film historian Julie Kirgo \/ Limited to 3000 copies \/ Available exclusively from Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a> and www.twilighttimemovies.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having directed the prototypical true crime thriller In Cold Blood <\/strong>(1967), writer-director Richard Brooks probably wanted his next picture to be a little \u2018lighter\u2019- a story in which families aren\u2019t trussed up and butchered like cattle, and hanging the perpetrators was the film\u2019s de facto End Credits.<\/p>\n

The title of Brooks\u2019 19th feature film as director infers a story with a classic alls-well-that-ends-well finale, but The Happy Ending<\/strong> proved to be something that goes against the grain of a classic Hollywood saga of bored privileged housewives boozing and bed-hopping and clothes shopping to their hearts\u2019 content before hitting sleazy lows, after which comes a hugs n\u2019 kisses reunion.<\/p>\n

Ending<\/strong> isn\u2019t a cheat for audiences, but a European-styled rumination on a woman\u2019s breakdown after living 15 years of ennui d\u2019extreme<\/em>: a mechanical marriage and sex life, a child baffled and unable to comprehend the increasing distance between mother and daughter, and a vapid personal life monitored by the live-in maid who turns a blind eye to Madame\u2019s secret drinking and pill-popping but still feeds reports to Monsieur.<\/p>\n

Ending <\/strong>also features a tour de force performance for Jean Simmons, an actress usually cast as an ing\u00e9nue (Desiree<\/a><\/strong>), a temptress (Angel Face<\/strong>), an exotic beauty (The Egyptian<\/a><\/strong>), or a strong-willed woman who nevertheless has moments of deep emotional torment from tragic life experiences (Spartacus<\/strong>). In many films, Simmons\u2019 played a survivor, but rarely did she enjoy playing a complexity of issues plaguing a present day woman.<\/p>\n

Married to Brooks from 1960-1977, Simmons co-starred in the director\u2019s Elmer Gantry <\/strong>(1960), and one suspects he may have been planning a custom-built story designed to showcase her untapped talent for understatement. Perhaps taking a nod from Sweden\u2019s Ingmar Bergman (Persona<\/a><\/strong>), Brooks crafted a modern character piece where men are the chief stressors who rob women of their sense of self, purpose, and independence.<\/p>\n

The film opens with a gauzy, happy-go-lucky music montage as Mary (Simmons) and accountant Fred Wilson (In Cold Blood<\/strong>\u2019s John Forsythe) woo each other at a ski resort, make fireside love, and quickly wed in a Hollywood-perfect ceremony. Their hopes and dreams are inferred by superimposed classic movie scenes from fairy tale weddings as they take their vows \u2013 part of a recurring motif in which Brooks\u2019 uses clips to infer movies as integral parts of adult pop culture, and as ideals that cannot be achieved, whether it\u2019s the (ultimately) perfect wedding in Father of the Bride<\/a><\/strong> (1950), or Mary yearning for the dreamy, life-and-death romance in her beloved melodrama, Casablanca<\/a><\/strong> (1942).<\/p>\n

15 years post-nuptials, only Fred seems content, while Mary \u2018is a good girl,\u2019 robotically making hubby\u2019s morning toast and coffee while Jack LaLanne<\/a> TV workout show for shut-ins seems to taunt her vapid life. Fred\u2019s spy \/ house maid Agnes (Nanette Fabray) encourages and partakes with Mary in the consumption of downers, and yet while Agnes walks a fine line as enabler and caregiver, she ultimately supports Mary\u2019s decision to make a spontaneous break for Nassau on a one-way ticket, ruining Fred\u2019s plans for Mary\u2019s birthday party where their friends numb themselves into states of disreputable conduct, lechery, or just get hammered.<\/p>\n

Once Mary\u2019s on her way to the tropics, we see far less of her husband, Agnes, and daughter Marge (Kathy Fields), and Brooks keeps his camera and editorial montages trained on Mary\u2019s emotional unwinding, her brief near-fling with a gigolo (Bobby Darin), and her mental emancipation which foreshadows a happy ending for her<\/em> rather than her dull husband.<\/p>\n

Ending<\/strong> is a peculiar drama because unlike women\u2019s director Bergman, Brooks was always a tough guy, writing action (The Professionals<\/strong>), adventure (Lord Jim<\/strong>), and literary film adaptations (The Brothers Karamazov<\/strong>) with en eye towards plot and generally male characters, so at first viewing, his take on the psychology of a bored rich woman can come off as dated, precious, wandering, and undercooked; with enough reflection, however, one can appreciate the way as a director Brooks seemed to have taken a few steps back, and entrusted the material to his cast.<\/p>\n

Some fill in their modest roles with their own charm and business: Teresa Wright (Shadow of a Doubt<\/strong>) adds gravitas to Mary\u2019s mom; comedian Dick Shawn (It\u2019s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World<\/a><\/strong>) plays Fred\u2019s boss Harry Bricker as a slick jug of liquid cynicism; and Karen Steele (Star Trek<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cMudd\u2019s Women\u201d) lends a tragic aura to her version of one of Mary\u2019s cliquish friends that live comfortably but lack any soul or spine to escape the comfort of credit cards, booze, and tranquilizers.<\/p>\n

Free from the tentacles of Gilligan\u2019s Island<\/strong> (1964-1967), and playing a portentous character to upcoming Charmaine Wimpiris in The Stepford Wives<\/strong> (1975), Tina Louise is fine as Helen Bricker, the most vocal of Mary\u2019s pals, and the matron of the clique\u00a0 fully aware of their poisoned lives as kept wives and former mistresses reliant on their husbands financial cushions, and yet she too lacks enough spine to break free and gamble on a new path. Mary\u2019s as much of a zombie as her pals, but there\u2019s a looming sense she\u2019ll either succeed on a second suicide attempt, or finally take control after bottoming out.<\/p>\n

When she does gamble on her own survival instinct and buys that one-way ticket, Brooks further fractures the film\u2019s structure, flashing back and forth to link cause and effects, dark secrets and explosive revelations.<\/p>\n

Fred is a nice guy with a modest, healthy libido and a fairly easygoing temperament, but Mary\u2019s just an acquisition. He cherishes her presence and contribution to the family\u2019s makeup, but he\u2019s oblivious to her emotional needs. Fred\u2019s na\u00efve in thinking a daily \u201cI love you\u201d halts her zombification, but he\u2019s also not a villain: he certainly enables her descent by being satisfied with his own state of complacency and being blind to her inner torment, but he\u2019s not playing psychological games to fulfill some sadistic sense of amusement.<\/p>\n

Forsythe\u2019s role is pretty easy to downgrade as peripheral, and the actor has a rather bland screen presence, but I\u2019ll argue his greatest challenge (if not a challenge for any actor) was finding that careful balance to portray Fred as ostensibly decent, genuinely in love with Mary, but wholly unable to understand a woman\u2019s needs; he gets along great with his teenage daughter, but his only means of attempting to help Mary is phoning her old haunts (bars, hair salons) between business meetings like some private detective, forcing Mary to kind of \u2018go underground\u2019 and have bartenders lie on her behalf.<\/p>\n

The coincidence of Mary picking the same flight where an old friend is heading to Nassau to meet her lover is a novelistic contrivance, but it\u2019s acceptable, because at this point the film has to snap into a new groove, and gal pal Flo (Elmer Gantry<\/strong>\u2019s Oscar-winning actress Shirley Jones), like Helen Bricker, is the observant, cynical chatterbox who nevertheless represents another facet of the bored housewife figure.<\/p>\n

In Nassau, Mary hangs out with Flo and her lover Sam (dapper Lloyd Bridges), but she eventually breaks free from the couple, sensing a need to wander and reassess, especially when Flo accepts Sam\u2019s offer of marriage. Whether Sam\u2019s a liar, or his decision to break from his wife and kids and marry silk sheet hopper Flo is immaterial; Flo\u2019s sudden freedom from her own directionless life gives Mary a needed lift, and when Mary returns home, it\u2019s to make a major life change that leads to emotional happiness, and perhaps full emancipation from the dangers of complacency.<\/p>\n

Michael Legrand\u2019s title track (\u201cWhat Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life\u201d) may have been written as a bittersweet if not ironic comment on Mary\u2019s arc from zombie to liberated woman, and it may well have matched Brooks\u2019 cynical title for a film that purports to be a maudlin melodrama, but the harmonics and simple lyrics also add to the film\u2019s strange dreaminess: even though the physical surroundings and people in Mary\u2019s life haven\u2019t changed, the numbness from a shocking event – a car crash – has somehow created a displacement that can only be rerouted by herself; the alternative is to continue on autopilot until the gas runs out. Legrand\u2019s song is like an echo of an earnest idyll, and its return at the very end gives the film its European resolution where no one\u2019s exactly victorious, wholly happy, or punished; things have simply changed, and what\u2019s left is Fred\u2019s heartbreak, which is mandatory, and deserved.<\/p>\n

Twilight Time\u2019s Blu-ray brings into circulation a title that\u2019s oft-requested for DVD, but never managed to make that leap in North America. MGM\u2019s HD master is gorgeous, and it\u2019s especially pleasing to see how the late great Conrad Hall (In Cold Blood<\/strong>, Black Widow<\/a><\/strong>, Road to Perdition<\/strong>) tackled colour cinematography. Known for dimly lit and stark B&W cinematography, for Ending <\/strong>Hall created a palette like a colour creamery; Brooks may have wanted a Euro-styled film with non-linear edits and a pastel colour palette to lush-up his gorgeous cast, but it\u2019s Hall\u2019s compositions, the shallow focus, and the remarkable soft lighting that transforms Ending<\/strong> into a glossy, cream-infused magazine spread, as though we\u2019re flipping back & forth through a slick photo-essay on the breakdown of an upscale marriage.<\/p>\n

In spite of the immaculate wardrobe, sets, and set d\u00e9cor, Hall\u2019s lighting remains very natural \u2013 harsh sometimes for hard indoor bulbs typical of kitchens and house stairwells \u2013 but it doesn\u2019t render the characters as fluff, much in the way Haskel Wexler applied pastels and natural lighting to match the fluffiness of the charming scoundrels in Norman Jewison\u2019s The Thomas Crown Affair<\/a> <\/strong>(1967), which Legrand also scored (and whose main theme, \u201cThe Windmills of Your Mind,\u201d makes a cute cameo in a Nassau piano bar).<\/p>\n

From the late sixties onwards, Brooks didn\u2019t direct a lot of films, but from In Cold Blood <\/strong>onwards, he seemed to switch to an editorial style that presented events in modules which could be shifted, re-ordered, or reconfigured to deepen the unraveling of his characters. Blood<\/strong> unfurls in vicious flashes courtesy of ace editor Peter Zinner (The Godfather<\/strong>, The Deer Hunter<\/strong>), whereas from Ending<\/strong> onwards, Brooks worked with veteran cutter George Grenville who (weirdly) made his feature film debut at 49, and worked almost exclusively on the director\u2019s remaining films. This is a beautifully cut movie, but Grenville would further elevate the art of kinetic (but not ADD-styled) editing to new levels in Brooks\u2019 next film $<\/a><\/strong> (1971). That heist movie is a masterwork in montage, and transcends the kind of escapist fluff Jewison almost<\/em> pulled off in Thomas Crown<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The release of The Happy Ending<\/strong> on disc is long overdue, and showcases both a marvelous actress and superb director, the latter who made far too films in the twilight of his career. Legrand\u2019s score, previously released on LP and later in a limited 2CD set, sounds great in an isolated stereo DTS track, showcasing his gorgeous main theme and some fine abstract underscore for Mary\u2019s foggy-headed street wandering. Less effective are the dopey lyrics fitted into Legrand\u2019s Nassau tracks, but Ending <\/strong>wouldn\u2019t be as affecting without the composer\u2019s knack for capturing the sadness of an eroding romance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2016 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a> \u00a0— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a>\u00a0— Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of Richard Brooks\u2019 19th feature film as director infers a story with a classic alls-well-that-ends-well finale, but The Happy Ending proved to be something that goes against the grain of a classic Hollywood saga of bored privileged housewives boozing and bed-hopping and clothes shopping to their hearts\u2019 content before hitting sleazy lows…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[4062,4496,639,4497,668,1319,4498],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3A7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13771"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13970,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13771\/revisions\/13970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}