American Ending - Kind Hearts and Coronets Discussion

[–] MovieGoddess9704 18 years ago

The original ending has Louis say, "Memoirs" and goes to a shot of the memoirs themselves. The American ending has Louis say, "Memoirs" and shows two prison officials looking through the memoirs at a gate.

The difference is minimal and only takes place in the last five to ten seconds of the movie. Personally, I think the American ending is rather pointless. It was altered to show that crime doesn't pay according to the Criterion menu which seemed obvious from the original ending.

I thought the shot of the memoirs detailing his killing of the D'Ascoyne family that we had watched him recalling/writing for the first hour and forty minutes was explanatory. The memoirs would be published, or at least read, by someone and he would be arrested and tried for murder again. This time he would not escape the gallows. If that concept was too subtle for the viewer, I don't think the warden reading the memoirs would have be clear either.

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[–] Rokol 18 years ago

You have been a great help. Thank you for replying.

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[–] rob-tindall 18 years ago

I'm not sure I agree. I always understood that the "American" ending confirmed a retrial for Louis, but that the "English" ending retained ambiguity. I've spoken about this with various enthusiasts of the film, who feel, as I do, that there is always the possibility of him retrieving his memoirs before anyone else has discovered or glanced at them. There is therefore the possibility of him escaping justice once more. Surely this is how things were intended?

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[–] kimcheesey 18 years ago

I agree with Rob.

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[–] nickjb2 18 years ago

It is not a definitive ending that makes a film truely great. It is the ambiguity that leaves the viewer thinking about the movie and leaves it embeded in the minds of the viewer as to whether or not the memiors were found or retrieved by Louis. The English ending is what embeds it as a film legend.

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[–] Narrator_Jack_dot_com 18 years ago

Just saw the Criterion version, and I almost want to say the already extant Alec Guinness Collection DVD of this isn't that visually inferior to it. Kind of different color timing and fidelity of picture.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] imdb-8172 18 years ago

I'm sure that your thinking at the time of the previous post was lucid, as such when I say I couldn't disagree with you more, it is with some degree of substance.

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[–] Jason_Radley 14 years ago

I don't think there's any intended ambiguity about the ending; his goose is well and truly cooked. It's a suitably blackly comic finish.

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[–] wvq2 14 years ago

I agree, and it seems especially appropriate that he's undone by his need to describe and explain his own actions, since he just won't shut up about what he's done for the entire damn movie.

While nothing in what we see absolutely compels us to draw the conclusion that he's found out, my sense upon seeing the movie is that he will be. Louis seems to believe he's going to be caught, and by the end of the movie I've come to trust his judgment about how things work in his world. Up to the end, he's been unflappable, with an unfailing sense of how to manipulate the world around him to get what he desires. If he feels that his memoir places him in danger, I suspect that he's right.

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[–] CharlesTheBold 8 years ago

There are 3 possible endings: escape and ending up with Edith, escape and ending up with Sybilla, and getting caught because the memoirs were found.

Wierdly, one critic thought the movie should have left out the "my memoirs!" scene altogether and let Louis get away. He called a "moralizing ending". Most viewers enjoy it as an ingenious final plot twist.

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[–] krasnegar 13 years ago

Depending on just how many of the murders he was convicted for and on the British approach to double jeopardy, it might not matter...

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[–] CharlesTheBold 8 years ago

Depending on just how many of the murders he was convicted for and on the British approach to double jeopardy, it might not matter...
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As another poster pointed out, the memoirs implicate him for a DIFFERENT set of murders (his relatives) than the one he has just been found innocent of ( Lionel). It would not be double jeopardy at all, but a separate criminal case altogether.

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[–] gtmail77 10 years ago

Why would he have forgotten to bring them with him when leaving prison? He seemed too shrewd to make such a huge mistake. Regardless, having done so does add to his self-torment whether the memoirs were read or not.

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[–] grubman1999 18 years ago

The English version of the ending would never have passed the U.S. Hays code of the day which ordered that crime must never be portrayed as paying.

Simple as that.

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[–] tonygumbrell 18 years ago

I have seen it with both ending and while I prefer the English, the American ending has a fine irony — just when he thinks he's gotten away with it, at the last minute, he's going to be pinched after all. In the English endiing he realizes, belatedly, he'd better somehow retrieve the memoirs, before anyone else reads them. A resourceful man, one imagines he will cope.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] that_ealing_feeling 17 years ago

May I clarify the English legal situation a little?

First, let's suppose Louis manages to retrieve his memoirs. In due course he would, if the action of the film happens before the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907, be granted a Royal Pardon. If in 1907 or after, his conviction for murder would be quashed by that court. Either way, Louis walks.

On the other hands, suppose his memoirs were found and his guilt confirmed? At the end of the film he remains, strictly speaking, a guilty man in the eyes of the law, despite having been released on the authority of the Home Secretary (the government minister responsible for criminal justice). So he would be taken back to prison, still under sentence of death.

However, it's very unlikely even then that he would hang. There was always a quixotic sense of fair play about the application of the death penalty in Britain, and it would have been considered cruel and unusual punishment to hang a man after telling him he wouldn't be hanged after all. In the 20th century a certain murderer, condemned to death, was reprieved because, for legal reasons, the hearing of his final appeal against conviction would have been delayed for a few months. It was thought it would be cruel to make him wait so long, uncertain whether he would live or die. Louis's sentence would have been commuted to life imprisonment, and, as he was no danger to the public, he would probably have been released on licence after 10 to 20 years.

So, whatever happens after the end of the film, Louis lives. Hurrah!

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[–] Vortimer 17 years ago

Louis did not commit the murder of which he was convicted, and the new evidence exonerates him. BUT the memoirs contain confessions to a number of murders (is it six? I can't remember) that the authorities are unaware of, so he would be tried for these crimes, and if convicted, hanged.

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[–] PorkPie007 17 years ago

As someone pointed out above, the Hays Code, in effect at the time the film was made/released, would have prohibited Louis from getting away with the crime, hence the need to make it explicit to American audiences that he would definitely be caught and re-tried. If it were not certain that this would be the case, the film could not have been released in America.

The definitive version of the film should be the British one, with its surprise twist and ambiguous ending. It was the same damn silly code that ruined Hitchcock's Suspicion: sure, it was set in Britain, but it was an American production, which is why it turns out that Cary Grant is really a thoroughly pleasant fellow after all, and it was all a series of unfortunate coincidences. So contrived... such a shame.

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[–] HalBanksy 8 years ago

Well more than 10 years later I still feel the need to point out both endings have the exact same implications. Just the American audience had to have it explained to them, while others were trusted to work it out on their own. Not much has changed since then.

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[–] Frumious_Bandersnatch_46 13 years ago

The "American" ending was a requirement of the Hays Office in order to get the film released in the US. The Hays Office had to have it drilled into Americans' heads that "crime doesn't pay." That's why it had to be shown to American audiences that the memoirs had indeed been found before he could retrieve them.

When "Kind Hearts and Coronets" was released in the US in 1950, film releasing was governed by a group called The Hays Office. It was an early attempt to police the 'morality' of American film. Established in 1922, the "Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America" was colloquially called the Hays Office for its director Will Hays, a prominent attorney at the time — and an elder in the Presbyterian Church. Basically, without his stamp of approval a film didn't get shown in the US. And it didn't get his approval without adhering to his standards of 'morality'. The board was eventually renamed the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), but Hays' rigid code remained in place until 1968 when the new rating system came into use: G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17.

Ever wonder why Ricky and Lucy had separate beds?* Thank Will Hays. Ever wonder why Clark Gable's "I don't give a damn" caused such a stir [in 1939]? Thank the Hays code that outlawed such language even though it was in common use by people everywhere.

Given all of that, there had to be an "American ending", insulting to both the British filmmakers and to the intelligence of US audiences. With the end of Hays' puritanical Code the original version was finally (and gladly) released in the US and that version is what we see on DVDs today.

*BTW: The first married couple to be shown sharing a bed on US television were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

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