We optimists need a good 2-hour funk now and then. 
LOL! Best post I’ve read in months!
I can’t remember the name of the movie, so maybe the SDMB can help me remember.
It stars (IIRC) Robert Mitchum as a guy in jail, who persuades his two naive sons to bust him out based on his innocence.
However, when they’re subsequently on the lam he robs and slays a young couple for no reason other than his own sadism. Of all the movies I’ve ever seen, I think this was the most disturbing, because the perception of his innocence is so convincing up until that point, but in retrospect, the audience and protagonists realise how taken in they were.
And back on topic, there’s no redemption at all. It’s simply grim.
I’ve added them in. Spoiler tags work like this:
[spoiler ]Text ya’ wanna hide.[/spoiler ] (Except, remove the extra spaces within the brackets.)
So . . . the OP asks (all due respect, rather naively) if a movie without a morally redemptive ending is, quote, “possible,” and your response is . . . what? Nothing else is artistically valid? Only Disney-style happy endings should ever be made? Because anything short of that is extorted brutalization?
Help me out here.
My vote for a movie without moral redemption is “Brokeback Mountain.” There is no happy ending (understatement of the year) - nobody gets what they deserve, nobody gets to be happy, nobody deserved to be as unhappy as they were, and in my opinion, there was no other proper way for the movie to end. I have undying respect for Ang Lee for giving us the ending he gave us - not Hollywooded up in any way. I don’t like it, but I respect it.
Purple Rose of Cairo I think qualifies.
Why buy a good bottle of wine or scotch when the cheap stuff will get you just as drunk? 
Also, a response to your question which I failed to provide in my post above–
Um, I don’t see where “should” comes into it. Don’t you have a choice as to which movies you pay to see? Or are you suggesting that all movies should be made with Disney endings so that you don’t even have to engage to the point of choosing which movie to see?
Hey, you’re the one who started painting in broad strokes and insulting those who disagreed with you. Anything that has redemptive elements is “Disney” or “Spielberg” dumbed down for an audience “not mature” enough to handle anything else.
Admit that’s a simplistic and insulting argument, back off of it a bit, and then maybe we’ll have room for discussion.
Reviewers don’t tend to reveal how movies end, you know.
Back to the OP: Midnight Cowboy.
Heh. Funny, but I think you’re creating a false dichotomy.
First of all, movies with redemption themes do not necessarily have happy endings. (Or “Disney endings” as friend lissener would surely put it.) Just as an example, Last of the Mohicans ended quite sadly. Yet, it had redemptive elements. The villain was killed, the hero won his girl.
Movies with redemptive elements can still be intelligent and thought-provoking. Other examples off the top of my head: On the Waterfront, Shakespeare in Love, Gandhi, Schindler’s List, Million Dollar Baby, The Silence of the Lambs, High Noon, Patton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Doctor Zhivago, The Verdict. All of these movies have redemptive elements. Some end sadly. All are thought-provoking and intelligent. None are nihilistic.
Dude, any insult you found in my post was your own invention. I’m allowed to discuss the conventions of Hollywood (which includes, in the context, Disney and Spielberg) without it being a personal insult to someone reading this board who isn’t either Disney or Spielberg. I never said anything about dumbing anything down, you did. And you should reread more carefully: my use of the word “mature” was in reference to the powers that mandated censorship, not the audiences.
Spoke, you seriously need to calm down and back off. I never said that anything that has redemptive elements is dumbed down.
You are totally twisting everything I said. Are you intentionally trying to sabotage this discussion so that I’m unable to participate in it? If not, please calm down and read my post a little more slowly, and try to respond only to what I actually said, and not to the exaggerated caricature you’ve managed to twist it into.
You could use that, almost unedited, as a blurb for Showgirls, which is basically All About Eve without the sanctimonious comeuppance.
In Krank, Jason Statham goes splat!!
I guess the bottom line is, between the way tdn worded his OP, and the bizarrely defensive response of spoke, that the answer is No: a movie without a happy ending, even an artificially tacked on sanctimonious one, is *not *possible, in the real world of movie marketing.
What about Episode III? The Jedi, in their arrogance, alienate Anakin to the point that he helps off Mace Windu, gets named Lord Vader, and starts his new Dark Side career by mowing down a bunch of kids. Obi-Wan knows he is partly responsible, but can’t bring himself to make the killing stroke and leaves Vader to smolder away. The end result is the good guys are killed or driven into hiding, and the bad guys crush the galaxy in their iron fists for a couple of decades.