GC Film Series - Spring 2001
The Lost Weekend ('45)
NOTE: If you do not wish to have certain elements of the plot revealed, please wait to read these until after you have seen the film!
I. [From www.filmsite.org]:
Based on Charles Jackson's 1944 novel by co-screenwriters Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder and filmed in NYC. A classic, melodramatic, realistically-grim and uncompromising "social-problem" film of the 1940s, about the controversial subject of alcoholism, told partially in flashback. Rather than join his brother Wick (Terry) on a weekend outing to the country, talented New York aspiring novel writer Don Birnam (Milland) - a chronic alcoholic with writer's block - spends a 'lost weekend' on a wild, self-destructive drinking binge. Eluding his persistently supportive girlfriend Helen St. James (Wyman), he desperately trudges down Third Avenue on Yom Kippur attempting to find an open pawnshop to hock his own typewriter for another drink. In Bellevue Hospital's alcohol detoxification ward, he awakens to shrieking inmates suffering the DT's, and in his apartment experiences hallucinations of a mouse attacked by a bat. He narrowly avoids committing suicide in the 'optimistic' ending. Academy Award Nominations: 7, including Best Film Editing, Best B/W Cinematography, Best Dramatic Score. Academy Awards: 4, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor--Ray Milland, Best Adapted Screenplay.
II. [By Brian Koller (www.imdb.com)]:
Many films have been made about alcoholism, but surely one of the best is "The Lost Weekend". Billy Wilder directed the drama, and Ray Milland played the lead. Milland was not the director's first choice, but several other actors had turned down the part. Milland himself was reluctant, for the character is a detestable anti-hero: selfish, lying, stealing, and caring about nothing except for getting another drink. "The Lost Weekend" begins as it ends, with a camera pan of the New York City landscape. The camera then focuses on a whiskey bottle hanging on a string from an apartment window ledge. Don (Ray Milland) has put it there to hide it from his brother (Phillip Terry) and girlfriend (Reagan-ex Jane Wyman), who have devoted the last few years of their lives in a failed attempt to reform Don. He spins lies to escape their watch, steals money from his brother, and goes on an drunken binge. Don suffers endless humiliations, has nightmarish delusions while undergoing detoxification, and nearly gets himself arrested. The story is relentless in showing the depths that Don will sink to for his next drink. Wilder leaves little hope that a drunk can be reformed, despite a requisite happy ending. One has to wonder how Don's brother and girlfriend could remain so loyal to him for the past few years, when he is such a manipulating loser. It seems that the only character who can see him for what he is, is a bartender (Howard Da Silva) who has seen the kind before. My favorite scene has Don watching an opera. Butlers are serving the characters, filling their champagne glasses as they prepare for a toast. As glass after glass is filled and raised, Don can't bear it anymore. He must leave the theater to sneak a drink. "The Lost Weekend" is not an enjoyable movie to watch. It faces truths about addiction without any sugar coating. But sometimes the best films are those that sacrifice entertainment for quality, in this case exploring the character of a drunk without softening it to make him more likable.
III. From: The Films of the Forties by Tony Thomas [Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1975]:
Prior to The Lost Weekend, drinking on the screen was primarily a subject for humor, but by the mid-forties Hollywood was daring to be more realistic in dealing with human faults and failings. There is nothing in the least comedic about the protagonist of The Lost Weekend, whose craving for alcohol leads him into nightmarish illness. Producer Charles Brackett and director Billy Wilder wrote the script and claimed that it was relatively easy, owing to the excellent construction of Charles R. Jackson's novel.
The decision to use Ray Milland as the star was bold, since the role was an abrupt departure from his image. The cultured Welshman (real name, Reginald Truscott-Jones) had made his Hollywood mark as a smooth, dapper leading man in light comedies, of which Wilder's The Major and the Minor (1942) was typical. Having worked with Milland, Wilder and Brackett knew that he was more capable than his previous pictures might have led people to believe, and they also realized that in casting Milland as a pitiful alcoholic they were increasing the film's impact. Paramount was not in favor of making the film and hesitant to release it. To their surprise, it turned into a money maker. The Lost Weekend is not a pleasant picture, but it is totally fascinating in telling the story of a man's addiction to the bottle. Don Birnam (Milland) is a man of good background and a writer. Neither the care of his brother (Philip Terry) nor the understanding of his fiancée (Jane Wyman) is enough to ease his need for alcohol. He becomes increasingly devious and deceitful, and as his condition and his lack of cash worsen, he pilfers money, pawns his typewriter, and attempts to steal a girl's purse in a nightclub. Alone in his room, Birnam sinks into de and imagines bats flying out of the walls. Later. the alcoholic ward of New York's Bellevue hospital he is subjected to the grim and chilling misery of psychiatric incarceration. Afterward, he pawns his girl's fur coat, so that he can buy a gun to suicide, but she manages to talk him out of it. The movie ends on a note of hope—the major variance from the Jackson novel.
The film won four major Oscars—as best film of 1945, to Milland as best actor, to Wilder as best director, and to Wilder and Brackett for best screenplay. Unfortunately for Milland, The Lost Weekend provided him with something of a hangover—for years he was the butt of drunk jokes, and he was frequently pestered by people wanting either to buy him drinks or to make fun of his supposed need for drink. What bothered Milland most were the pleas for help from real alcoholics.
GC Film Series - Spring 2001
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