Ive always felt the ending of Wong Kar Wai’s Fallen Angels to be brilliant, for whatever reason the european version uses Dennis Brown’s Things in Life" which works so much better in my opinion (and not only because of the link to Chungking Express).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyCBWSD7MwU&feature=related
The Secret in Their Eyes.
McCabe & Mrs Miller
The Ghost Writer – Roman Polanski
Sunset Blvd. – Billy Wilder
Stalker
Au hasard Balthazar
Once Upon A Time In America
The Fire Within
Well, I actually did make a list on this topic… http://mubi.com/lists/grand-finales.
01. “Nights of Cabiria”
02. “The 400 Blows”
03. “The Third Man”
04. “Chinatown”
05. “Bonnie and Clyde”
06. “If….”
07. “Sunset Boulevard”
08. “The Godfather”
09. “City Lights”
10. “Casablanca”
11. “Network”
12. “The Conversation”
13. “Some Like It Hot”
14. “A Serious Man”
15. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”
The IRON FREAKING GIANT.
Are we talking “most beautiful” or simply the best? A lot of these films have endings that could hardly be called “beautiful” in the typical sense. Anyway, here are some picks from Yours Truly….
Somewhere in Time
Heaven Can Wait (1978)
It’s A Wonderful Life
San Francisco
Angels with Dirty Faces
Rocky
Cinema Paradiso
West Side Story
Hair
Rudy
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Starman
Home Song Stories
The final scene in “Orpheus.” I always wondered what was a worse fate than death.
Thanks, there are some really amazing ones in here and some I still have to watch.
@ Jon – Great list, I would definitely include 400 Blows, Sunset Blvd., If…., and A Serious Man as well
@ Mark – Beautiful meaning more in terms that it is the best possible finale in the context of the film. The happiest endings are rarely the most memorable ones IMO.
The endings of ROME OPEN CITY, JULIET OF THE SPIRIT, and JULES ET JIM, all of which involve characters moving left to right across the screen as the space opens up and the music swells up on the soundtrack to fill that space.
The Elephant Man
Somewhere in time has a really great ending, I thought the ending in Titanic was very similiar, at least in my mind.
Lonesome Dove had a really moving ending I thought
All Quiet on the Western Front ranks as one of my favorite endings
And another is Lawrence of Arabia.
Blow up
Andrei Rublev
A.I.Artificial Intelligence
Dead Man
iheartllama
What are the most perfect/ chilling ending sequences ? I was thinking of compiling a list but would also like to see what everyones ideas are ?