As stated by the authors of 'The Film Studies Reader', Hollywood films rely on notions of decorum, proportion, formal harmony, respect for tradition, mimesis, self-effacing craftsmanship and cool control of the perceiver's response (Hollows et al, 2000). The classic narrative cinema, then, is one that is made up of motivated signs that lead the spectator through the story to its inevitable ending.
             For David Bordwell 'Hollywood is an excessively obvious cinema'. He states that a set of formal conventions of spectacle, verisimilitude and continuity constitute Hollywood's very definition of a movie itself. The authors of 'The Classical Hollywood Cinema' found that 60% of the movies they analyzed ended with a display of the united romantic couple- the cliche happy ending (Hollows et al, 2000:167). As we all know the hero always gets the girl and they all live happily ever after. Almost sickeningly predictably but I guess that's Hollywood for you! The narrative of this cinema reposes upon the triad 'order/disorder/order-restored'. The beginning of the film puts in place an event that disrupts an apparently harmonious order which in turn sets in motion a chain of events that are causally linked. Cause and effect allow the story to move smoothly along. At the end the order is resolved and order once again in place (Hayward, S., 1996).
             It has been argued that the end of a film is made to appear as a function of the beginning in order to better disguise the fact that the beginning is actually a function of the ending. Films have happy endings because part of their cultural function is to affirm and maintain the culture of which they are part (Hollows, J., Hutchings, P. & Jancovich, M., 2000). In this day and age it wouldn't seem so bizarre but could you imagine a Hollywood classic adhering to an ending where the two main characters got married, then divorced because the man dec...