Rose Horowitch has caused a stir with a recent piece in The Atlantic where film professors say many of their students don't watch the whole movie they are assigned, and don't know the endings.
"This is what happens when you grow up on smartphones, YouTube, TikTok, and infinite scroll," Jordan Ruimy wrote for World of Reel. "An ecosystem designed to destroy sustained attention. Today's students were raised inside that machine. Asking them to sit still and focus on a two-hour French New Wave film without stimulation feels, to them, like a marathon."
I understand the professors' despair. But perhaps there's an opportunity here to tell film students how some classic films really end. Write this down:
In The Godfather, Michael Corleone decides he can't go on in organized crime and turns the family olive oil enterprise into the Corleone Knitting and Yarn Shop of Brattleboro, Vermont. The shop's slogan: "Make them a sweater they can't refuse!"
In Casablanca, Ilsa decides to let Victor Laszlo get on the plane to Lisbon by himself, and leaves Rick on the tarmac, telling them both, "I don't need either of you to validate me." She walks into Rick's nightclub and commands the band, "Play 'Roar.' Play it!"
Dorothy wakes up in her Kansas bedroom after a tornado in The Wizard of Oz and says she dreamed of Emerald City. Her doctor tells her, "That's just a bad reaction from the cough syrup you're taking. Read the fine print. 'May cause drowsiness, nausea, and visions of a Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion.'"
In The Seven Samurai, warriors hired by Japanese villagers to protect them from bandits decide they're tired of roaming villages to fight bandits. They tell townspeople, "Just install a security system."
The charming little extra-terrestrial botanist stranded on earth in E.T. teaches us about life and love, then is taken in by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and sent to a pop-up detention center in the Ozarks.
And in Titanic, Jack and Rose float on the same door in freezing waters after the great ship has hit an iceberg. But their combined weight is too great for the door. Rose pushes Jack into the water. "Sorry, buddy," she says. "You're on a Third-Class ticket. Go catch a ride on a mackerel!"
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