Audio, not visual: Mozart’s cackle over the last few frames of Amadeus.
That’s the shot I came to post. Totally awesome how the last two words are spoken after the cut to black.
The closeup of the Tramp’s face at the end of City Lights.
The end of The Shining showing an old photo from the hotel’s history; a ball from 1921, As the camera zooms in, we see Jack Nicholson among the revelers. I’ve seen the movie so many times I don’t always wait through the whole shot but the first time I saw it, it stayed with me for days. He doesn’t look particularly creepy (like poor wretched Carol in Repulsion<shiver>) but the implication . . .he has been absorbed by the hotel? He’s always been part of it? Great way to end it.
Osama. The final shot – of a man taking a bath – might be the most horrifying scene in the history of film. Though it’s meaningless out of context.
Lot of great ones mentioned already, particularly 2001: A Space Odyssey, Monsters Inc., The Godfather, Inception and The Third Man.
I would also nominate:
Dark City - A man and a woman on a pier, overlooking a sun-drenched ocean. The perfect ending, given all that has come before.
Breaker Morant - Two coffins being filled.
Notorious - Two spies drive away to safety, and the bad guy is called back inside a house to his certain doom.
The 39 Steps - The two fugitives, finally vindicated, take each other’s hand.
All the President’s Men - Woodward and Bernstein keep working in the newsroom as the teletype prints out the later key events.
Glory - The casualties of the attack on Battery Wagner are buried in a common grave, and then we see their monument on Boston Common.
Planet of the Apes? A beach and an ocean, anyway, and… you know.
What movie used Ozymandias?
My nom – The Last Wave.
My favorite has always been the ending of “Electra Glide in Blue” with Robert Blake. His character, Big John Wintergreen, gets blown away by double shotgun blasts out of a van he is driving after. All he wants to do is return something but the bad guys think the jig is up. He slides along the highway and manages to sit up as he dies. Then a looong camera shot out the back of the van as it drives away. Big John fades into the distance as the credits start.
Skip to 1:27 of this clip. It does not show the whole shot, it cuts off way too soon.
DennisDirty Larry Crazy Mary.
Suddenly the movie just ends and the credits roll over a burning car. The biggest, and First WTF ending I can remember.
Too late to edit post #68, here is a description of the final shot from the IMDB:
“After Wintergreen is killed the camera pulls away up the road for three minutes before a freeze-frame dissolving to black and white for an additional two-plus minutes before credits finally roll.”
Dennis
At the end of Carrie, the camera looks down on a screaming, hysterical Amy Irving after another one of her hand-out-of-the-ground nightmares, her mother trying to console her, then cut to black.
Goodfellas - Henry Hill, in a voiceover, bitches about having to be a “regular schnook” in Witness Protection as he picks up the morning paper off his doorstep. Cut to Joe Pesci’s character, Tommy, firing a gun six times at the camera in a homage to The Great Train Robbery. Cut back to a bored Henry closing his front door as he returns to his now-boring existence. Cue Sid Vicious singing “My Way” as the screen goes black and the ending titles inform us what happened to the main characters.
Of course! Makes you wonder how much Shelley affected the writer and the production
people! There must be other direct references to “Ole Percy” but this will do to prove his
influence continues…
Nice work, EH!
Back in the '80’s, I just bought it and had planned to spend the evening watching it alone, but my friends insisted coming over and watching it with me. They were utterly bored, but I was fascinated!
Dirty Harry walking out of the quarry without his badge.
A really jarring final shot comes at the end of X: The Man With The X_ray Eyes, where Ray Milland’s character ends up at a church revival and tears out his own eyes off-screen. The final shot is a freeze frame of him screaming at the camera with two empty sockets where his eyes used to be.
Saw this on TV late at night when I was a young teen and it shocked the hell out of me…
I remember that!:eek: Not sure if I covered my own eyes at the end or have chosen to forget it. I remember the self eye gouging but not that they showed it.
<Googles image . . .> Annnnnnnd now I do :eek: 40+ years of successfully blocking out that vision and now I can relive it.
Stephen King opined that
…was “almost” perfect. All it needed was Milland screaming in horror: I can still see!
Another ending that only makes sense in context, where it’s chilling.
I envy you your ability to not remember that.
I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight.