The Night Digger (aka The Road Builder) - Explanation of the Ending?

[kelly77]

I just saw this on TCM (as The Road Builder); a middle-aged spinster (Maura) falls in love with a serial killer (Billy) and moves with him to live in a house on the coast. Everything made sense up to that point.



Final sequence - a woman from a nearby farm tells Maura that she can't find her dog (that's the first and last time that woman appears in the movie). Then Maura walks to her house and hears Billy playing a hamonica inside. Then Billy appears outside the house on his motorbike, Maura cries, Billy rides off the cliff Evel Knievel style and dies. The End - WTF?



My only theory is that Maura suddenly realised Billy is a serial killer, so Billy commits suicide out of guilt... but that makes no sense. There was no reason for Maura to suddenly make that assumption; the dog's missing... so he killed it... so he's a serial killer? (There's also a strong possibilty that she knew all along he was a murderer, which would make the ending even more confusing).

[DB7]

Imho Mrs Dahl knew he was a serial killer and moved to the Highlands to lessen the opportunity for Billy to continue his spree and curb his homicidal tendencies. Billy meanwhile fears his next victim will be his lover and commits suicide.

[Steve Crook]

name='DB7']Imho Mrs Dahl knew he was a serial killer and moved to the Highlands to lessen the opportunity for Billy to continue his spree and curb his homicidal tendencies. Billy meanwhile fears his next victim will be his lover and commits suicide.

That's fairly much how I saw it. The missing dog being the indication that Billy's gone out night-riding again. Although I usually concentrate on Pamela Brown playing the mother. One of the last roles for a great actress.



Steve

[DocRobertPepper]

Maura knows he has done something bad because he tells her that he has and then she sees that the nurse that visits has gone missing

so she takes out all of her money and dolls herself up and tells him she has done this because she loves him and she doesnt care what he has done

The thing about the dog isnt because he has killed it its the fact that a very pretty women has knocked on his door putting tempation back in his path

she tells Maura that her husband wont be home till late and has probebly told Billy the same

Maura knows what Billy is going to do so blocks his path to the women's house which is just across some fields

Billy then sees that she knows and that she cannot cure him so ends his life



Well that how i see it anyway



a very good British film IMHO

[duffy moon]

I also saw this on TCM Europe for the second time the other night and I must admit I liked it a little more than the first time. Terrible print though, very pale and worn.

I agree, Pamela Brown is excelent, looking strangely like a cross between Denholm Elliot & Dennis Price, she just adds a lot gravitas and tension to this film, which is quite slow and methodical, which is probably why didn't enjoy it so much first time around having seen it billed as a horror film, expectations of other things an all that...

That's quite a good reading of the end pepper, I had started to nod off towards the end 10 mins or so, so that pretty much covers base.

I didn't realise Patricia Kneale was Mrs Dahl. That must have been a long drive all the way up to the highlands on the back of that chopper, what with her dodgy leg n'all!

[Steve Crook]

name='duffy moon']I didn't realise Patricia Kneale was Mrs Dahl. That must have been a long drive all the way up to the highlands on the back of that chopper, what with her dodgy leg n'all!

Not only that Patricia Neal (no 'K', no 'e' at the end) was Mrs Dahl, but that she had a debilitating stroke in the mid-1960s which was chronicled in the film, The Patricia Neal Story (1981), starring Glenda Jackson.



The Night Digger was only Patricia's 2nd film after her return to work and she was still suffering the effects of the stroke a bit. So Roald worked it into the story



Steve

[DocRobertPepper]

Did you notice Thelma (Brigit Forsyth) as the district nurse

a nasty nudie bit

what on earth would Bob (Rodney Bewes) say

[duffy moon]

An quite a fine pair of norkins they were too! '



Terry, Terry, did you see that Terry?' '

Aye kidder, smashin they were. Cut above like.'

[DocRobertPepper]

Love the uniform too

[duffy moon]

I can feel a thread coming on.. least expected cases of actress remembered for other, having 'got them out' in a film where you wouldn't have expected them to have been 'gotten out', as it were.



Perhaps not on second thoughts...

[Woollers]

Hi there,

I know I'm late to this thread. The poster above is correct and the ending isn't all that ambiguous if you look at the signs:

1) Director Reid sets up a recognisable pattern in Billy's behaviour: see pretty young girl; withdraw into unsociable, want-to-be-alone mood; then go kill.

2) Reid sets up another sign for us: Billy consoles his solitudinal moods with the harmonica.

3) We know Maura knows (or at least suspects) Billy. Reid signifies this to us in the scene where Maura sees the billboard about the missing nurse.

So, we're in the Highlands. Maura, established as an addicted helper of others, hopes to free Billy from his pain and has taken him away from people. However, when she realises a pretty young thing has appeared to Billy (first part of the pattern), she goes to the cottage. She hears him playing the harmonica (second part of the pattern). Reid is non-verbally telling us the third part of the pattern is about to repeat. And that Maura knows this.

When she confronts Billy on his motorbike, he's on his way to kill the girl. (Notice the strap ready on his bike seat, another sign from director Reid which we can recognise from the killing of the other two girls.) Confronted like this, Billy can't bear it.

Maura, at her total loss, finally frees him. She finally succeeds as a rehabilitator of others, but it took a total sacrifice of her own wants and needs to do it. (Read the Maura character arc too: what she symbolises; what journey Reid establishes up for her in the first act; and how her journey ends in the ending too.)

I adore this film. It's quirky. It's funny at times. It's horrifying. It's sad. It's one of the rare few times a film has been a horror film AND a love story at the same time and worked.

Cheers