Plot
1953: Through the course of a Colorado autumn and winter, Mary Spencer and Fred Wilson lead an idyllic existence. Mary drops out of college (with 6 months to go) to marry Fred. Their perfect wedding mirrors the happy endings of the films Mary loves.
1969: It is the Wilson's 16th wedding anniversary. On his way to work, Fred, a successful tax consultant, tells their maid Agnes that he has found vodka hidden in Mary's wardrobe and asks Agnes to keep an eye on his wife. Mary sets out for the beauty parlor. At an airline office, however, Mary buys a one-way ticket to Nassau, The Bahamas, looking for an escape from her dull and unhappy suburban life.
On the flight, Mary recalls the horrors of last year's anniversary party, when Fred drunkenly flirted with a blonde divorcee, and she took refuge in the bottle and a rerun of Casablanca. At a stop-over, she calls home and learns this year's anniversary party has been a different sort of disaster. Her teenage daughter Marge is scared by Mary's call. It reminds her of the time she had found her mother unconscious after an overdose.
En route to Nassau, Mary meets Flo Harrigan, an old college friend she has not seen since 1953. While Mary settled down to married life, Flo has been the mistress of a series of married men, lives a carefree and hedonistic lifestyle, and has fully embraced the sexual revolution. She is on her way to Nassau to meet her latest beau, Sam. Mary tells her she has had to get away from Fred, so Flo promises to look after her.
In the Bahamas, Mary enjoys the sun and long, empty stretches of beach. At a casino, she meets Franco, a hustler from Los Angeles who is down on his luck. Franco mistakenly assumes that Mary is wealthy. He affects an Italian accent and tells Mary he is a journalist who writes about film stars. She agrees to go to "his" boat, but when he learns Mary is not wealthy, Franco quickly loses interest, confessing his scam.
Walking by the ocean, Mary recalls the occasion of her suicide attempt — she had returned from having a face lift to learn that Fred was in Reno with a girl. Marge had found her in danger of death and rushed her to hospital. After that, Mary resumed drinking, recklessly spent a lot of money, and crashed her car while driving drunk.
In the present, Sam proposes to Flo, who accepts. Mary flies back home. Agnes helps her move into rooms she has rented away from Fred and Marge. She takes a job and enrolls in night classes at the university. It is at the college where Fred finds Mary one evening. He asks, "What went wrong? All our friends are married, and they're happy...or seem to be. Alright, they put up with it. But without marriage, life would be disorganized, crazy." Her reply: "People in love are crazy." They tell one another they still love each other, but "it's not enough," she says. After some more conversation as he walks her toward the university entrance, she asks "If we were not married, would you marry me again?" The look on his face and lack of an affirmative answer says it all.
Reception
In Life magazine, Richard Schickel gave a negative review, describing the film as a "melodramatic travesty" and criticizing its unlikeable characters. [3] The New York Times 's Vincent Canby was also critical, writing The Happy Ending "is a kind of false Faces —a movie that set out to expose the kitsch of Hollywood fantasy". [4]
The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress (Jean Simmons) and Best Original Song (Michel Legrand, Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman for "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?") at the 42nd Academy Awards. [5]
In 2020, Richard Brody of The New Yorker gave a retrospective review in which he praised the film. [6] He wrote, "The shudderingly impassioned, history-jangled, cinema-centric drama The Happy Ending, from 1969, reflects vast changes in Hollywood and in American society, and even nudges them ahead. What's more, it does so aesthetically, with startlingly expressive images and performances that fuse with the action to reflect on—and advance—the state of movies themselves." [6]
