Movies with depressing endings [Spoilers]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Bonnie and Clyde
The Dirty Dozen
Scarface
Easy Rider
Happiness
Angels With Dirty Faces
Sunset Boulevard
Double Indemnity
The Postman Always Rings Twice

Not to mention James Cameron's Titanic, but that's not so much a bummer as ridiculous.

Ah! Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is actually my 4th favorite!

Thanks and keep the rolling!

Irreversible
Funny games
The house of sand and fog

Throne of Blood
Titus
Ran
The Professional
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Battleship Potemkin
A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) & Masculin / Feminin & Weekend (Goddard films in general)

For the single ladies out there:

Looking For Mr Goodbar


Funny, though, I wouldn't really consider most of AB^2=BCxAC 's list depressing endings, but they were certainly not happy ones.

Blow's ending, though, really bummed me out.

gohoward feels that the CNN documentary covering Howard Dean's run for President of the United States had a depressing ending.

Ah! You guys predict me too well - "The house of sand and fog" is a tie for 4th place! :-)

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

It's too early to think of any more...

The Haunting of Hill House
A Clockwork Orange
Taxi Driver
The Fury
Resevoir Dogs
Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb)
Medea (the Pasolini version)
L'Aventura & L"Eclisse (and many other Antonioni films)

There's something about a movie that has the protagonists fail that is pretty wonderful.

My list is not so much depressing endings as it is films that end on a note where the protagonist is utterly defeated. I guess it's a fatalistic / moralistic thing.

But honestly, any business-type who says you shouldn't end a film on a downbeat obviously believes very little in the power of film to be cathartic or for audiences to embrass that. And they should consequently have their eyes gouged out with cold chopsticks. Or something like that.

Edit: oops embrass = embrace (sorry Danny Mcnamara)

Seven
Leon

Spartacus
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Godfather Part II
Das Boot
Donnie Darko
Jacob's Ladder
The Last Emperor
The Day After / Threads
Duel In the Sun
West Side Story
Chinatown
Wall Street
The Last of the Mohicans
Kiss of the Spiderwoman

Rush
The Empire Strikes Back
Breaking Up
Where The Red Fern Grows
Old Yeller
Kids
Carlito's Way
Jacob's Ladder
Philadelphia
The Godfather II
12 Monkeys


I'd put some of these after some of the other movies mentioned above, but a good list of depressing ones.

Here are a few I can think of...

Mystic River
Dark City
Hulk
Van Helsing
Deep Blue Sea
Pitch Black

Oh... and the last episode of the O.C. was very depressing.

Fixinated!

Fallen
The Bicycle Thief (this is up there for most depressing)

Yep. I walked straight from film class to a campus bar and had a shot of Jack Daniels. A tremendous movie.

The original version of Brazil, definitely.

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And don't forget Bergman:
The Seventh Seal
The Virgin Spring
etc.

Another seriously bummer movie:

Dancer in the Dark

Harold and Maude

the bicyle thief

At the moment, the two that come to mind are

- Dancer in the Dark
- g:mt (aka. Greenwich Mean Time)

Oh, and most Japanese movies...

Also, 东宫西宫 (East Palace, West Palace I guess would be its English name?) seemed to be going a quite depressing way, but my DVD kind of krrkrkrkkrk'ed before I made it to the end, so I don't know if the ending is too...

Great Movie. Have to watch it again sometime.

The setup for the ending is incredible. Gilliam did a really good job with that one.
Another "sad" movie: Schindlers List.

Or his taste in movies in general...

Jean De Florette

Dogville.

I seriously (well, not really but close to seriously) wanted to slash my wrists after seeing it. Made Irreversible seem like a light romantic comedy.

Couple of more...

Brian's Song
Love Story (never saw it, seriously)
The Last American Virgin

lion king.. that damn kid needed some come-up-antce

Crumb

AND ITS A DOCUMENTARY. EVERYONE LOVES THOSE.

Good ol' Lars, he does have a knack for making you depressed watching his movies... suppose he doesn't want to be the only one...

I haven't seen it, but I'm told Breaking the Waves is just as bad as Dancer in the Dark and Dogville...

Edit: One more, the �ber-depressant of films:

"Body without Soul"

A Czech documentary about teenage boys doing tricks in the streets of Prague. Not only does it make you depressed, it also regularly makes you want to throw up, hurl heavy objects across the room, and not least kill quite a few of the people in it.

Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory. Perhaps the greatest anti-war movie ever made.

Which one do you mean? The one about the girls from 1988? That was certainly extremely depressing, but one of the most depressing I have seen is Requiem For A Dream, and although I haven't seen The House Of Sand And Fog, I've heard that it is very sad. A Beautiful Mind also kind of made me sad. What the last three have in common is Jennifer Connelly, who seems to have a penchant and a talent for playing the helpless, wide eyed innocent victim in all three movies, as well as in The Hot Spot. She seems to be able to produce those tears at a moments notice, as she did in The Hulk as well.

The original Brazil was also kind of depressing, but the sheer insanity of the film and the fact that Terry Gillam made it, made it also sort of hilarious.

The first Alien movie and especially the third were also depressing in their own kind of way.

Probably the most depressing I can think of is 1984, although Requiem For A Dream comes close, in that I lived in a house full of junkies in the early 90's and their lives took some very similar paths to death and destruction that those in the movie did.

A film that brought me to tears was A World Apart, a drama based on the early life of Ruth First, a South African anti-Apartheid activist, whose young life was shattered by the trauma that was South Africa. The film has a terribly sad ending, and the worst part of all is that in reality, Ruth First, who went on to marry the leader of the South African Communist Party, Joe Slovo, and who fled the country and lived in exile in Mo�ambique, was murdered by the South African secret police with a letter bomb shortly before South Africa underwent its transformation to democracy.

Das Boot
Black Robe
In the Shadow of the Raven
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
The Pirates of Silicon Valley

The Little Mermaid--I still can't believe what Disney did to that beautiful story

But top of the list is:

The Mission
Brazil
Unbearable Lightness of Being

Cool Hand Luke
The Great Escape
Papillion (though he does escape..he's hopeless)
Seven!
Requiem for a Dream- why I will never touch heroin
Dr. Strangelove
Eyes Wide Shut- movie ends with 'People do messed up things, deal with it' Otherwise good directing.
Chasing Amy- not only is everything crappy, it didn't have to be..this guy just messed it up!

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I am asking that whoever changed the title of my thread to change it back to what it was. I do not want the thread going towards having lots of spoilers. I can add a msg in my original post not to post spoilers if the admins wish, but I think the title the admin changed it to is misleading.

Thank you.

To me, there's a difference between films that are sad and those that are depressing. A film that is sad at least leaves you with some hope.
I can't recall too many falling into the latter category, but I guess Sophie's Choice, as well as two Lina Wertmuller films affected me that wayl: Seven Beauties (I know, it's supposed to have comic elements, but I didn't find it funny!) and The End of the World in our Usual Bed in a Night Full of Rain (even the title's a downer!). Also, most of Bergman's and Fassbinder's films. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go cry.

I'd like to add that there is also a difference between movies that are depressing and movies that have depressing endings. For example, while Schindler's List and The Killing Fields are for the most part relentlessly depressing, they end on upbeat notes.


Some more movies with depressing endings:

Menace II Society
Summer of '42
Romeo & Juliet (Zeffarelli version)
Salem's Lot
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
La Bamba
Death of a Salesman (Hoffman, Malkovich)

What?! No Gallipoli?
Well, dammint then:

Gallipoli
The Plague Dogs

Perhaps my two favorite "Well... life sucks..." movie endings.

John Steinbeck. Every book he wrote was depressing. Seems as though he just delighted in beating the joy and hope out of characters.

Cannery Row: Depressing
Where the Red Fern Grows: Depressing
Grapes of Wrath: Hey, guess what? Depressing
Of Mice and Men: wait... oh yeah... Depressing

Some people were happy with Seven's ending. Apparently there is another version but I forgot what it was about.
Dr. Strangelove has a depressing ending? It's one of the funniest ever.
Eyes Wide Shut actually ends with "What are we going to do now?. Kidman replies "****."
Cool Hand Luke's ending was inevitable. He was going to be everyone favorite guy and martyr.

Is it Paul Newman and Stanley Kubrick day?

Geez, no kidding.

-- 3+hour epic of love, War, separation, betrayal, reunion and then ....

-- "I've never been happier than at this moment"

-- Car crashes, and they die.

Sorry, my bad. Where the Red Fern Grows wasn't Steinbeck. I was thinking of The Red Pony. Which was depressing.