On Twist Endings and Unreliable Narrators

(Obviously this post features spoilers from a number of movies – The Woman in the Window, Unfaithfully Yours, Stage Fright, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt – so proceed with appropriate caution.)

As we saw with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, twist endings and an unreliable narrator can be found in movies nearly a hundred years ago. However, once movie history entered the prime of golden age Hollywood, these things were far less common. Studios fear confusing audiences, who had a certain expectation that the story was going to play out in a particular way. During the thirties in particular, storytelling was done in a predominantly straightforward manner: black and white morality and a story that went promptly from A to B to C with no deviations. This brand of storytelling – while producing some wonderful results – had a limited shelf life. Under Citizen Kane’s influence, the forties were more adventurous in story structure and protagonist morality, but they still mostly stuck to general audience expectations.

There were a few exceptions, however: Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window (1944) featured an “it was all a dream” twist ending while Unfaithfully Yours (1948) by Preston Sturges played out most of the film’s action in the main characters head. Both of these choices were made, at least partially, as a way to circumvent censorship, which required murderers pay for their crimes.

(Sturges, by the way, wrote The Power and the Glory, a film that did the whole Kane multiple flashback structure eight years earlier.)

In the case of The Woman in the Window, audiences responded positively while Unfaithfully Yours was a disappointment. The payoff of the former film played to the audience’s sympathies and desires, giving them a result that made them happy while Unfaithfully Yours made the audience feel as if nothing had happened. The exact same formula but two different results, based on audience sympathy and expectations. Why? The main character of The Woman in the Window (a noir crime drama, incidentally) is a kindly man played by a beloved actor (Edward G. Robinson) who happens to find himself in a bad situation, therefore audiences were relieved to find out that he had, in reality, done nothing. 

The Woman in the Window's "It was all a dream" ending has since become a plot get out of jail free card

On the other hand, the main character of Unfaithfully Yours (played by the cold, British Rex Harrison) did not have audience’s support, especially in a dark comedy. They didn’t want or expect a happy ending for a character who had just fantasized about killing his wife. The contemporary success or failure of the twist ending or unreliable narrator device depended largely on the expectations and desires of the audience.

Not a dream, but a murder fantasy all in the mind of Sir Alfred de Carter as he conducts Semiramide

This can be clearly seen in a number of films made during the fifties that utilizes these devices. Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright sets up as familiar Hitchcock tale, with an wrongly accused young man attempting to hide from the police and prove his innocence with the help of a young lady. The problem is that he actually is guilty and the flashback that proved his innocence was actually false, he was an unreliable narrator. While the film wasn’t a flop, it only made a modest amount of money and audiences were left displeased. They had been trained on previous Hitchcock films to expect one thing (innocent young man lives happily ever after with protagonist girl) and got quite another (young man is a murderer, tries then to murder protagonist girl) as result – while a clever inversion of formula by Hitchcock that we can appreciate today – was not popular with the public.

(It is worth noting that Hitchcock blamed the false flashback/unreliable narrator not the twist. Hitchcock used twists again, in Vertigo and Marnie most notably but never returned to the false flashback.)

The same can be said for Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, another Fritz Lang film with a twist ending. In this case, the twist is that the protagonist of the story - who elaborately framed himself for murder in order to prove the foibles of circumstantial evidence - actually was guilty of the crime he supposedly didn’t commit. His "just" crusade was derailed when all the evidence proving his innocence was destroyed in a fire and the only man who could clear him was killed in a car accident - talk about bad luck! Therefore, he is arrested, tried, and about to be executed all while the audience believes he is innocent. Just as the pardon comes in, we find out he is actually guilty and then he is executed as planned. Again, we have a likable character and actor (Dana Andrews) who the audience has been rooting on for the previous 79 minutes all of a sudden turned into a monstrous villain in the last minute of the film. Again, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt wasn’t a failure but it wasn’t a success either and contributed to the end of Fritz Lang's Hollywood career.

1957’s Witness for the Prosecution features both a twist ending and an unreliable narrator but was a massive box office hit that was nominated for six Academy Awards. Besides an uncommon quality of filmmaking, Witness for the Prosecution overcame potential issues with the audience by leaning into the twist ending through marketing. Movie posters talked about the “breath-stopping” climax of the film and begged audiences “don’t reveal the ending – please!” After the film was over, a voiceover said something similar to audiences that had just viewed the film. Therefore, the vast majority of audiences were expecting a shocking twist ending and were prepared when it inevitably came, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of audience expectation by changing the expectation.

Because audiences were so thoroughly warned about Witness for the Prosecution's twist ending, they ate it up

(Horror director William Castle would use this tactic – now widespread in movie marketing – as well as many other promotional gimmicks, such as “insuring” audience members for $1,000 each in case they should die of fright during 1958’s Macbre.)

After Witness for the Prosecution audiences began to be trained to expect things like twist endings and unreliable narrators. Popular televisions shows like The Twilight Zone often utilized a variety of twist ending and they became something that audiences were expecting and even looking forward. One of the biggest hits of 1968, Planet of the Apes, brought this type of science-fiction twist to the big screen, further expanding the expectation for a twist ending. Additionally, retrospective viewings of films like Stage Fright, Unfaithfully Yours, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt have been much more favorable because audiences are now ready for twist endings in a way they hadn't been in the past.

Since then, the twist ending has become popular to the point of overuse. It has become an easy way for filmmakers to make their films seem more complex than they are and paper over previous continuity issues. That isn’t to say that there aren’t great movies with twist endings or unreliable narrators, but they tend to overshadow the rest of the movie. Consider films like The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, or Fight Club: all these movies are very popular  and it is easy for fans to explain what makes them so great without having to dig any deeper than the twist and/or unreliable narrator. However, how often do you hear anyone mention anything about these movies besides the twist? The twist becomes the whole movie and discussion never goes beyond that. And often, in lesser movies it is used as a shortcut around good storytelling and plot structure, making it popular for filmmakers that wish to appear deep but can’t actually manage it.

And so, in perhaps the most unexpected twist of all, film has come full circle, from a time when audiences rarely expected or liked twists to the twist being the main appeal of the movie. The correct path lies somewhere in the middle of those two extremes  and, as always, filmmakers will strive to find that perfect balance.

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