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This chapter chronicles Prokofiev's relocation to Moscow in the spring of 1936, his reaction to the denunciation of Shostakovich in Pravda; the composition of the ballet Romeo and Juliet and the Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of October; the censorship of those two works, and Prokofiev's service as a cultural representative for the Soviet regime during his last two trips abroad. The chapter addresses his collaborations with the director Sergey Radlov (who conceived a happy ending for Romeo and Juliet) and Nataliya Sats (who commissioned Peter and the Wolf for the Moscow Children's Theater), his fraught relationship with the Chairman of the Committee on Arts Affairs Platon Kerzhentsev, and his speeches at the Union of Soviet Composers. The description of his last trip to the United States corrects inaccuracies in the historical record concerning his interest in Hollywood film composition. Prokofiev was monitored throughout the trip by Soviet officials working for the VOKS organization and the Embassies in London and Washington.

Chapter four introduces the analysis of Chariton's poetics with an reconsideration of some remarkable characteristics singled out for one reason or another before: Chariton's general penchant for authorial intrusions – indicating a concern with self‐definition; his allusion to Aristotle's Poetics at the beginning of the last book (8. 1. 4) – inaugurating the invention of the happy ending and a new poetics of tragicomedy; the guidance of his readers through theatrical devices – most useful in a new form of literature; a large number of quotations from Homer – implying an intention to become a new Homer in prose; the setting of the story in Miletus and the alleged origin of Callirhoe from Sybaris (e. g. 1. 12. 8) – potential allusions to preceding low‐life strains of prose fiction, the Milesiaca and the Sybaritica; finally, the negative image of Athens – which sets the new literary form apart from the old classical models, especially Thucydides who provided the historical frame in which the story is set.

The happy ending is often taken as the definitive feature of romance; this chapter looks at the exceptions. Each of the motifs discussed in earlier chapters can impel disaster, as Judas and Mordred survive exposure in an open boat, magic is increasingly assimilated to witchcraft, and fairy prophecy predicts calamity. A number of the prose romances, not least Valentine and Orson and Malory’s Morte Darthur, end in parricide and war. The logical end of such treatments was to recast Arthurian romance as tragedy, as happened in The Misfortunes of Arthur, where the problematic succession of Arthur is used as the material for a revenge play. Shakespeare’s reworking of the story of King Lear keeps its original framing clearly enough to recall the romance underlying it.

The 1930s was still a time of experimentation, and novels were novels in their own right. Charles Boon did not impose many restrictions on his authors and, to a large extent, relied on the authors for guidance on current tastes and attitudes. Boon's views on romantic fiction were undoubtedly shaped by his personality. The characteristics of the archetypal Mills & Boon heroine and hero began to fall into place. Romance in the Mills & Boon novels in the 1930s took many forms. A happy ending is the dream of most of the women who read the novels in the 1930s, which is the goal of all heroines in Mills & Boon romances. Clearly, the romantic novels which Boon published in the 1930s were free from the editorial restrictions which would dominate the decades after the Second World War. At this time, Boon's experimentation with styles gave authors certain autonomy. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Mills & Boon's transformation as a ‘library house’, supplying romantic fiction to the circulating libraries, was complete. Boon had amassed an impressive list of prolific authors who sold well.

This introduction traces the negative reputation of the ‘happy ending’ in film studies’ discourses on Hollywood cinema, analyses the distinction between a cliché and a convention, establishes some of the concepts most frequently associated with this convention (e.g.: homogeneity, closure, ideological conservatism, ‘unrealism’), and lays out the ways in which the book will interrogate its subject's critical reputation.

The most basic assumption about the ‘happy ending’ is that it represents a homogenous cliché that is repeated again and again across Hollywood cinema. This chapter addresses this notion by trying to construct a definition for the ‘happy ending’. Is it an ending at which characters or audience are left ‘happy’? Is it a particular narrative motif, such as the final couple? Is it a ‘morally satisfying’ outcome? Or is it created when a film seems to uphold particular values? Chapter 1 confines itself to examining endings produced in one demarcated period and one sub-genre: the romantic melodrama between 1939 and 1950. A central aim of this discussion is to cast reasonable doubt upon the existence of the ‘happy ending’, thus allowing the remainder of the book to analyse individual happy endings relatively free from suspicions about the convention's innate homogeneity. However, almost as important as the many variations unearthed are the traits that this chapter's happy endings seem to share, which prove useful as the book proceeds on to other central assumptions surrounding the convention.

The Hollywood ‘happy ending’ is almost universally taken to be inherently ideological conservative, in part because of traditions in literary and film theory that portray narrative closure itself as ideologically pernicious. This chapter approaches the issue of ideology from three angles. Firstly addressing the broad question of popular art's ideological influence itself, it discusses (with particular reference to Before Sunrise [1995]) what potential the concept of the final couple might be said to have for structuring viewers’ real-life romantic relationships. Secondly, it takes up the question of the ideological effects of closure, particularly as they relate to the model of the self-consciously artificial ‘happy ending’ made especially famous by much critical work on the films of Douglas Sirk. The chapter concludes by addressing several historically-distinct endings taken from what is often considered an innately ‘conservative’ genre, the romantic comedy. The chapter concludes by arguing that the ideological significance of the final couple will tend to rest less on the convention's mere presence than in the particulars of its presentation.

The assumption that the Hollywood ‘happy ending’ is inherently ‘unrealistic’ is extremely prevalent. Chapter 3 examines the association of happy endings with ‘unrealism’ in two main ways. Firstly, it treats ‘unrealism’ as an effect of an artistic convention's excessive familiarity, and considers the traditionally close conceptual relationship between the final couple happy ending and fictional narrative in general, suggesting that this persistent association has often motivated films (such as Pretty Woman [1990]) to cast doubt upon the authenticity of their own happy endings. Secondly, partly via a discussion of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), the chapter asks whether there is something innately ‘unrealistic’ in the convention of the romantic happy ending itself, probing the issue of the relationship between the disordered, ‘open’ nature of life and the necessarily finite and ‘closed’ nature of narrative – particularly as this matter informs the basic tension between ending and beginning that lies at the heart of the final couple.

This chapter reviews Johnnie To's enunciating role as an auteur of genre film through the convention of the happy ending, as a method of drawing certain conclusions about To's achievements to date. The happy ending is an ironic way of ending this epilogue, as will be made clear, but since To's career is ongoing and likely to contain more revelations and surprises, this chapter cannot make conclusions about his career as such, but about the way his films have ended — as a means to indicate To's contributions to genre and the art of cinema. To's ability to unsettle our perception of genre as a world of pleasure and closure is all part of his vision of Hong Kong on the road to Avici, but his action cinema carries a dialectical weight — fatalism carries meaning and redemption, thus the destiny of his films is something else entirely. The final action in the action films of Johnnie To is the act of inducing thought.

It is very common for scholars to treat the ‘happy ending’ as inseparable from definitive narrative closure. Chapter 2 looks in detail at this association by examining the degrees of closure which seem to be offered by different final couple happy endings. A discussion of Sleepless in Seattle (1993) prompts reflections upon the act of ending a film with a romantic beginning - ultimately what the convention of the final couple amounts to. While it is argued that this film succeeds (against what seem considerable odds) in making such an ending feel emphatically ‘closed’, other films (texts covered in detail include The Best Years of Our Lives [1946] and The Graduate [1967]) use different strategies to render the same convention comparatively ‘open’. By examining factors not always accounted for in discussions of closure (for example, point of view, genre, implied continuation, etc.), this chapter also attempts to move the matter of closure and happy endings beyond a simple ‘open’/’closed’ dichotomy and towards a consideration of the different kinds and means of closure available to final couples.

The conclusion reiterates the importance of distinguishing between the Hollywood convention of happy endings and the Platonic ideal of the Hollywood ‘happy ending’, and suggests some directions in which future research on the subject might profitably develop.

In a time when reading increased along with the desire to escape from the harsh everyday reality, Mills & Boon's romantic fiction sold well. In all respects the basic tenets of the fledgeling Mills & Boon editorial policy — Lubbock's Law, the Alphaman, the happy ending, and a wholesome moral theme — were retained, even reinforced, by wartime. Certainly, Mills & Boon heroines in the 1940s are stronger, more responsible, and more independent. Wartime settings and characterizations enhanced the romantic possibilities for Mills & Boon authors during the Second World War. Interestingly, some novels are also filled with life lessons for lonely women who might be tempted to give all for a soldier. Mills & Boon continued to pay extreme attention to names and settings in novels so as to avoid any potential libel action. The legacy of the Second World War on Mills & Boon and its authors was strong and lasting.

The Wrong Man was based on the true story of Manny Balestrero, a New York musician who was unjustly accused of armed robbery and hounded by the legal system until his wife suffered a nervous breakdown. Hitchcock felt so strongly about following the true story that he filmed in a semi-documentary fashion, shooting in black and white and using authentic New York locations wherever possible. The censors’ review of the script elicited only three suggestions, the fewest they had to offer on any of the director’s American films. The Code office asked that the toilet fixture be eliminated from Manny’s cell, that Manny not be shown ‘quite naked,’ and that the word geez be eliminated. Hitchcock easily accommodated these suggestions, but argued with Warner Bros. over the coda at the end of the film, which suggested in on-screen words over a family strolling beneath palm trees that the Balestrero family lived happily ever after. In actuality, Manny’s wife Rose never recovered fully from her depression. But Warner’s need to tack a happy ending onto the grim story outweighed the director’s pursuit of reality.

That the heroes of tragedies and the persons of operas are divided by a historical and philosophical chasm is a core belief that we have inherited from Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Adorno, who insist that life for opera means death for tragedy. We can reach this conclusion only if we refuse to believe that Euripides may be the most tragic of poets and that the representation of pathos may be his essential task. Once we recognize what Euripides meant to early modern librettists, then we can begin to see opera as a creative response to his “escape melodramas.” This chapter studies two intersecting traditions: the tragedy with a happy ending and operatic tragedy. In the early modern repertoire, these intersect in a series of masterpieces running from Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno di Ulisse in patria (Venice, 1641), through Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride (Paris, 1779), to Mozart’s Idomeneo (Munich, 1781).