Hollywood Guide to Happy Endings

Hollywood Guide to Happy Endings

Scenario 1: The most common category of love story is “First Love”, normally an affair that separates a character from his or her parents, such as in Titanic and Dirty Dancing. These are about someone who leads you into a different world. It needn’t be a lifelong relationship, and often the object of love is a parental substitute: would die for you, but you can still have sex with them. A sub-genre is the story of the widow/widower who finally separates from the memory of a dead spouse, ready to love again, as in Ghost.

Scenario 2: The second category is the Pygmalion story, also known as “Mentor and Protégé”. As well as Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, this includes films such as Educating Rita and The Graduate. It is normally, but not necessarily, an older, controlling man and a younger woman. But the younger person also has a motive: the recognition and nurture of a more powerful patron. This sort of story normally ends in conflict, but it need not if the teacher is ready to accept the pupil as an equal in the end.

Scenario 3: “Obsessive love” is Professor Millman’s term for the Fatal Attraction story. This is often a scenario that applies to those who felt parental abandonment when young, and who remain angry about the rejection. When they meet someone whom they idealise, they go too far and become so demanding that they eventually ensure that they will be rejected again. The result is often violent, as in Fatal Attraction. Wuthering Heights is a variation on the same theme.

Scenario 4: This is the “Downstairs Women and Upstairs Man”: a theme that includes Pretty Women, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, and which can end in an uplifting or a tragic fashion. It is the story of someone who pursues a partner who is hard to win over for fear of what society would think of them, or falls in love with a partner who ought to be out of reach. Its psychological origin in women is often a father who is dismissive – it is often about proving that a man who appears cold can actually be quite tender. (364)

Scenario 5: “Sacrifice”, in which a person gives up the love of their life, as in The End of the Affair, Brief Encounter, Casablanca and The Bridges of Madison County. Its theme is a person who has always led a cautious life but becomes embroiled in a passionate affair. He or she is then caught between wanting to be with their partner, or wrecking the life of someone else, or even their own life. Often thought to be about guilt, it’s really more about control: these people are not used to letting go.

Scenario 6: “Rescue”, in which one lover seeks to nurse the other back to physical or emotional health. The genre includes Beauty and the Beast, Dark Victory, Mona Lisa and Shadowlands. A female protagonist has often lost her father, and seeks to do something she blames her mother for never achieving: saving him. If she can restore her lover, she restores something of her father. For men the scenario may be darker. It can be about choosing a partner who is usually dependent, who will love, but who will soon be gone.

Scenario 7: “The courage of love”. The theme of some of the most beautiful love stories of all time, such as Sleepless in Seattle, Onegin and An Affair to Remember, it is the story of willingness to take a risk for love. It is about the person who finally learns to make a commitment, to have faith that things will work out, and to avoid avoiding. People who avoid commitment are often those who have a dream that they will never grow old; they tend to learn to fall in love only once they confront their own mortality.