A cautionary tale about marital infidelity became a box office smash mostly due to a reshot ending that created a thrilling, suspenseful communal moviegoing experience I still remember. It might be one of the earliest memories that made me fall in love with movies. The new finale was perfectly executed by Adrian Lyne, cemented the film’s reputation and made Michael Douglas THE guy to cast if you want to see a male lead do moral wrongs and be forgiven for them. All they had to do was convince Glenn Close to film it.
Close was adamantly against the new ending, feeling that it reduced her layered performance as Alex down to single-minded psychopath. At the time, people largely dismissed Close’s protest as someone too close to the character to understand the benefit of giving an audience satisfaction. Close felt the reshoot lets Dan (Douglas) off the hook and makes it easy to reunite him with his family, which it does. It’s taken decades for people to go back and realize that Dan is also the villain here. Where it gets muddled is in the unexplained areas of Alex’s psyche, because she wasn’t a perfect picture of mental health brought down by one man. The film hints at her being troubled before she meets Dan. The lamp switch scene is where she cracks completely and becomes the dangerous psycho that leads to big box office. The internet would’ve had a heck of a time debating this one.
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