By now, even casual movie lovers know about the “meet cute,” Billy Wilder’s name for the first duty of romantic comedy film makers – introducing eventual lovers in a clever manner. But the finish to the romance — whether happily or — rarely but memorably melancholy — the chase to the finish is the most common end cute, which has become one of the tritest of trite romantic comedy cliches --- the frenetic pulse pounding intrusively soaring music-scored race to the (almost always) happy ending.
Near the end of Act III, somewhere around the 90 minute mark, shortly after the boy has lost the girl or the girl lost the boy, or (in this century) the boy the boy, or the girl the girl, the realization hits one or the other or both of them what the audience has long known and in the best of the genre, yearned for — that they really, really, really are – after all – meant for each other!
. . . He races to the hotel just in time for their New Year’s kiss (WHEN HARRY MET SALLY) ... She races to the boat to sail with him (HOLIDAY) ... She races down the street and climbs the stairs to THE APARTMENT ... They both race to the top of the Empire State Building (SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE) ... He chases her down the street (SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK) ... He chases her bus with his car (LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS) ... He climbs her fire escape (PRETTY WOMAN) ... He chases her to a beach in New England (WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS) ... And maybe the most famous chase of all, he races to the church accompanied by Simon and Garfunkel (THE GRADUATE).
Billy Wilder (with partner Charles Brackett) wrote one of my favorite meet cutes for Ernst Lubitsch to direct Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert in BLUEBEARD’S 8TH WIFE. In a department store, they each crave a certain pair of pajamas, but she wants only the bottoms and he needs just the tops. A tantalizing thought for 1938.
Lubitsch didn’t prefer heart stopping endings. His classic, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, is a model for how to carry off genre tropes that have stood the test of time. They begin in mutual dislike, deny their mutual attraction, a secret intervenes, and just when it seems hopeless, they discover and admit their love for each other.
When Nora Ephron wrote and directed the remake, YOU’VE GOT MAIL, she wisely kept all the beats and eschewed the chase to the end, relying instead on a more leisurely stroll to a city park. As with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in the Lubitsch template, Ephron could rely on the charm and chemistry of her stars, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, to close the deal.
Wilder gave in to the chase scene in two of his best, THE APARTMENT, and SOME LIKE IT HOT, in each case having the girls — Shirley MacLaine and Marilyn Monroe --- both clothed in fur collar coats, race to the climax.
When I watch these films rush to the inevitable finale, I find myself wondering what all the fuss is about. Most of the running seems unnecessary — if this were real life in which logical rules might apply. He has to stop her from boarding that plane (or in the old days, train) and leaving his life. Of course, in a sane world not accompanied by frantic underscoring, he could hop on the next plane or train which merely would delay the happy ending by a few hours.
Admittedly, there are a few plots in which delay might be a nuisance. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT and THE GRADUATE both had the brides leaving the wrong guy at the altar in order to chase after their true loves. But even in the wide world of movie clichés, a bad marriage is rarely an insurmountable obstacle.
The re-marriage sub-genre of romances is replete with second chances of this sort. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY is a classic example: rebounding from the bas first marriage to the right guy, the stubborn heroine is saved at the brink of the altar from the awful misstep of a wrong guy marriage by the re-marriage to the right guy.
Even in a more modern story telling style, like FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, the wrong guy marriage is merely a temporary setback rather than foreclosure of true romance.
The frantic overly music-scored pursuit strikes me as a cheap device which is stolen from that other enduring but cliché ridden genre, the action thriller. Car chases are the most common set pieces of thrillers as well as slapstick comedies, going as far back as the earliest days of silent movies when Keystone Kops careened over Los Angeles streets chasing Keaton, Langdon, Hardy and Laurel.
The classic one in BULLIT stood on its own for suspense, gradually quickening pace, and only at the climax, an explosive crescendo of violence. As with all examples, the imitators have had to up the ante each time until all sorts of CGI vehicles litter the freeways in every thriller. (This has happened over and over again in the history of films. Another clear example is PSYCHO, which spawned the slasher genre.)
I am usually bored with chases in any genre and when watching with a remote in my hand, I make liberal use of the FF button. After all, in the thriller genre, there is not a moment when I doubt that the protagonists will survive the carnage, disposing of all of the stunt workers whose cars are overturned, riddled with shells, forced into oil tankers or over the sides of elevated highways. This is merely akin to a level in a video game in which countless minions of evil are eliminated — just momentary obstacles en route ... to the next level . . . and the next. . . .
So, why take a device such as the chase from the thriller genre into light romances? I think it is often a failure of imagination or courage. Film makers are often trying to inject into the romantic comedy genre some sense of suspense which is lacking from their story telling. Perhaps these “auteurs” are embarrassed by the commercial nature of their project and wish to put a personal stamp on it, to prove that a director was involved and Action is a director’s forte.
An inherent problem in the genre is the almost certain knowledge that the satisfying ending will included professions or admissions of love. But many makers of the genre are too embarrassed — or are incapable of or too lazy — to write the sort of scene that Lubitsch admired, closing with wit and charm.
Cameron Crowe was an exception. He wrote and directed one of the better ones for JERRY MAGUIRE. But maybe the almost too sentimental lines, “You complete me,” and “You had me at hello,” are too risky or too embarrassing for most film makers to dare.
Another annoying lazy rom-com device is the “lyrical moment,” usually placed somewhere in Act II, when the lovers are beginning to fall in love and need to share intimate details in conversation with each other. Rather than writing witty repartee for the pair, the auteur’s camera draws away and admires the scenery while the orchestra or pop song tells us how to feel ... and we watch the montage of strolls in the park, ferry rides, or other date nights, usually culminating in the tastefully (for PG13) sex scene. (Whenever I saw such movies while with my own date, I found myself wishing for the intrusion of a soundtrack to relieve me from the obligation being witty or revealing to my date, especially while my mind was “racing” to the hoped-for, more R rated, climax!)
A successful exception to this practice are the Linklater / Hawke / Delpy “BEFORE ...” trilogy, in which the essence of these films consists of these walk-and-talk witty and character revealing conversations.
Wilder, who I cited as one who resorted to chases in his two most famous romantic comedies, had the talent to write (with I.A.L. Diamond) great unsentimental closing lines: in THE APARTMENT, when “Baxter” professes his love, “Miss Kubelik” tells him: “Shut up and deal;” and in SOME LIKE IT HOT, “Osgood,” informed that “Daphne” is a man, responds: “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
Only a few film makers escaped the oldest cliché of romantic comedies, the finale in which boy gets girl with its accompanying kiss at the fade out. In some notable exceptions, the formula was discarded: boy loses girl ... period!
The most famous of this rare variant is ROMAN HOLIDAY, in which princess Audrey Hepburn returns to her duty and newspaperman lover Gregory Peck walks away from the castle, to the fade out.
In the 90's, MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING had Julia Roberts losing her friend / desired lover to Cameron Diaz and accepting friendship as the next best thing.
Kevin Smith’s cult Indie classic CHASING AMY created a new variable. For a new audience, Smith had Ben Affleck forced to choose between his best bro’, Jason Lee, and his lover, Joey Lauren Adams, while she rejected both of them, citing their immaturity and her preference for women.
Smith foreshadowed the contemporary sub-genre of romantic comedies in which the girl is far more adult than the boy, a variant which Judd Apatow has perfected in this century.
