----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Josh Hirsch suggests these films: "The Passenger (note the Jack Nicholson repeat -- kind of interesting) A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (Peter Medak) Messidor (Alain Tanner) Fearless (Peter Weir) Ordinary People Naked (Mike Leigh) None But the Lonely Heart (Clifford Odets - Cary Grant) Bagdad Cafe Thelma and Louise The Sheltering Sky Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch) Perhaps people could refresh my memory as to whether any characters in these films actually do anything like what I've described. It also strikes me that an action like this would be typical of films by Godard, Antonioni, Wenders, Altman, Tanner, Bresson, Akerman, etc." THE PASSENGER doesn't really fit since Nicholson's dead at the end (I think), although this might apply to Romy Schneider's character. ORDINARY PEOPLE has Mary Tyler Moore walking out of the family, leaving father and son to console one another--male bonding at last! I don't think THELMA AND LOUISE really counts since they're headed into the Grand Canyon--unless they have Chuck Jones Coyote-like powers of rejuvenation. On the other hand, there's at least a bit of room in that final freeze frame of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID for doubt about their fates--but I don't think it really matches the kind of "bolting" you've described. BADLANDS doesn't really count, either, I think, since the protagonists are arrested at the end. STRANGER THAN PARADISE is a good match, as would work by the European modernists you've cited. Consider L'AVVENTURA, where a bolting protagonist *initiates* the narrative. The final scene of THE 400 BLOWS would seem to fit. Sometimes classical Hollywood can do it too--consider THE NUN'S STORY. How about Bergman, THE PASSION OF ANNA; Mizoguchi, OSAKA ELEGY (but it's been a while since I've seen it); Wenders, PARIS, TEXAS; Sirk, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. In THE HEIRESS, de Haviland bolts *in* instead of out. The endings of HIGH NOON and DIRTY HARRY suggest bolting from public service (but Harry reconsidered in the sequels). LAST TANGO IN PARIS is probably too-THELMA AND LOUISE-like too count. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS has Hannibal Lecter off on his own at the end. John Wayne walks off into the sunset at the end of THE SEARCHERS. Everybody leaves--in one way or another--in THE GRIFTERS. Does a final descent into madness count?--Then how about MORGAN and BRAZIL (and PSYCHO)? BODY HEAT does show us where Kathleen Turner has run off to--I think this category needs to have some uncertainty attached to the bolting. People are always running off in Tennesee Williams' work--see STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (though Blanche is actually carried off) and GLASS MENAGERIE. SERPICO goes into hiding. Mad Max and Eastwood's High Plains Drifter have a tendency to disappear after their work is done. Anti-musicals?-- ALL THAT JAZZ, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN and NEW YORK, NEW YORK (but these are stretching things). BLADE RUNNER ends with escape from LA (in both versions). SHANE is yet another gunfighter riding off into the sunset. Several kids disappear (a la L'AVVENTURA) in PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK. --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN