Win One for the Zither!

Via Isaac Chotiner, I see The Times' movie critics have compiled a list of the "Top 20" movie endings of all time. Isaac is more enamoured than I am of the list, which concludes thusly:

5.Chinatown

4. E.T.

3. Casablanca

2. Butch Cassidy

1. Carrie

Well, fine. But what about, in no particular order: The Lavender Hill Mob, The Great Escape, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Brief Encounter and, last, but by no means least, the brilliant ending to the best (British) movie of them all, The Third Man. It don't get better than this:

UPDATE: Andrew Stuttaford agrees with me.

Comments

"thusly": and so we meet with another Americanism?

[Fredegunde]

A few years back, the Oscars welcomed the creation of an award for best make-up with the usual montage of the usual suspects: Lon Chaney, Planet of the Apes, all kinds of special effects...

And then the narrator says something to the effect of "not forgetting the make-up on the face of Garbo:" cut to the final shot of _Queen Christina_ as that supremely luminous visage just fills the screen.

That faint rumble you heard afterwards was the sound of about half a billion men lurching mindlessly towards their television sets.

Just her face: simple, yet seared in the memory. *That,* my friends, was an ENDING!

[Eveningsun]

Does too get better than that: Modern Times.