The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
Before 'La La Land' there was 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg', and the end of Jacques's demies is much more devastating. This French film from the 60s is a full-fledged musical: every word that is said is sung, and among its melodies (composed by the wonderful Michel Legrand) we navigate the frustrated love story of two young people, Genèvieve (Catherine Deneuve) and Guy (Nino Castelnuovo). When he has to leave for military service, the lives of the lovebirds are separated forever.
Well, until this last scene. Now he works at a gas station, where she enters as a customer without knowing who she was going to find. A few words and the bombshell drops: the girl waiting in the car is their daughter, conceived on the last night they spent together before their separation. Between them, there is an unresolved longing that leaves us with a bitter taste. It tragic end to one of the best musicals in film history.
Seven (David Fincher, 1995)
You don't want to know what's in the box, Brad Pitt. This, one of David Fincher's best films, shows us two police detectives, the young Pitt, and the veteran Morgan Freeman, as they follow the trail of a serial killer who is causing them many headaches. The criminal ends up revealing himself in the form of Kevin Spacey, with whom they will experience one of the most intense final scenes in film history. And all for one box. Or, rather, because of what is inside it: the head of Gwyneth Paltrow, the girlfriend of the young detective who will end up losing his mind at this revelation and shooting the murderer in the head, thus becoming a criminal himself. Not that we can blame him either.
Twilight of the Gods (Billy Wilder, 1950)
Living in an illusion, Norma Desmond style. This classic by Billy Wilder gave us this mythical character, an old silent film glory who refuses to accept that his time in Hollywood has ended. When a young writer enters his life, he sets out to carry out a project with him that will return her to the top of the industry. But what will end in arrest for murder? Now, the way they get her to turn herself into the police couldn't be more epic: simulating a Cecil B. DeMille filming, which makes her go down the stairs like a star until she utters the famous phrase "Anytime, sir." DeMille, I'm ready to roll."
Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971)
Gustav Mahler's music has been forever etched in our brains thanks to the monumental ending of 'Death in Venice'. The film by the Italian Luchino Visconti is a chronicle of the decadence of the upper classes in Venice at the beginning of the 20th century, where a German composer (Dirk Bogarde) goes to experience the last stage of his life. Almost like a divine sign, he meets a teenager with whom he becomes obsessed. His youth, his beauty, his confidence. He could be an angel of death that appears around the corners to take him away at any moment. And he will do it in a shocking last scene on the beach of the Venetian Lido: Bogarde watches the young man in the water, against the light, like an apparition, and his body begins to collapse. A drop of his hair dye falls on her face and heralds his death.
Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968)
Undoubtedly, one of the most impressive endings in the history of cinema, accompanied by the desperate screams of Charlton Heston. And it is that, as we will see, he realizes that he has been wrong throughout the film. He is an astronaut who lands by mistake on an unknown planet where the tables have been turned between apes and humans: the former dominate life and institutions, while the latter are animals without even the ability to speak. The protagonist flees from this place where he was trapped to discover, on the shores of a beach, that he was not on any unknown planet, but on the Earth of the future. And he understands it when he sees the Statue of Liberty half buried in the sand. Certainly one of the best script twists in movie history.
