Great movie, dumb ending

There are plenty of examples of strong movies having to weaken its ending to satisfy the Production Code during the time it was enforced (1934 to, roughly, the middle 1960s). One example was the film Thieves’ Highway (1949) with Richard Conte, Italian actress Valentina Cortese and Lee J. Cobb. It was based on a novel of the social realist school that described how ordinary working guys in the fruit trucking business were being ripped off by powerful. Working guy Conte is out to get gangster Cobb for ruining and crippling his father who was in the trucking business. It’s a tough little film. But the ending, with Conte killing Cobb and then driving off with the mob boss’ moll (Cortese), didn’t sit well with the censors. So, the studio had to shoot and add two new scenes that are so silly they almost sink this film. In the first, the police show up in time to stop Conte from committing the killing. A full screen close-up of a cop’s face tells us never to take the law into our own hands. The next added scene showed Conte and Cortese in the car on the way to meet Conte’s mother. He has to say something like, “We will get to my mother’s house tomorrow but we will stop on the way and get married” – just so no judgmental jerk in an audience would think, “Say, are they going to spend the night in a motel without being married?” As (never my) President Trump would say, “Sad.”

The Mist

Pompeii

Gone Girl

On my first viewing, I hated the interview scene with Nick and Amy- there's a missed opportunity of something I wanted to happen. But on subsequent viewings, I've warmed up to the screwed up life Nick (and his child) are going to have with Amy.

Agreed.  I LOVED this movie, one of the most enjoyable I'd seen in a while...so good that I remember thinking about 2/3 through, "how the hell are they going to end this?"  I can't come up with a better ending, but the one they picked came up short for me.

Snowpiercer