The Lost Weekend (1945)

User Rating:

8.2/10   

Director:

Billy Wilder

Writers:

Charles R. Jackson (novel)
Charles Brackett (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

3 September 1946 (Sweden)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

How daring can the screen dare to be? No adult man or woman can risk missing the startling frankness of The Lost Weekend!

Plot:

The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four day drinking bout.

Plot Keywords:

Alcoholic | Weekend | Drinking | Writer | Flashback

Awards:

Won 4 Oscars. Another 9 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Ray Milland	...	Don Birnam
Jane Wyman	...	Helen St. James
Phillip Terry	...	Wick Birnam
Howard Da Silva	...	Nat
Doris Dowling	...	Gloria
Frank Faylen	...	'Bim' Nolan
Mary Young	...	Mrs. Deveridge
Anita Sharp-Bolster	...	Mrs. Foley (as Anita Bolster)
Lillian Fontaine	...	Mrs. Charles St. James (as Lilian Fontaine)
Frank Orth	...	Opera Cloak Room Attendant
Lewis L. Russell	...	Charles St. James

Runtime:

101 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Germany:12 | UK:A (original rating) | UK:PG | South Korea:15 (2003) | Argentina:16 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved

Filming Locations:

Bellevue Hospital - 550 First Avenue, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

Earle Hyman began his fifty-plus year career as a 17-year-old extra in this film.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Helen pours whiskey for Don near the end then divides it into two glasses, it is nowhere near a quarter of the way up the glass. When Don chooses not to drink it moments later, and drops his cigarette in the glass, it is more than half-way full.

Quotes:

Gloria: Don't be ridic'.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Simpsons: Co-Dependent's Day (#15.15)" (2004)

Soundtrack:

LOUISE

Textbook drama about addiction powerfully told...

From the first shot of a bottle hanging from a drunk's apartment, we realize we are about to see a clever addict and a weekend of his demented exploits. Ray Milland has an honest face, not unlike Jimmy Stewart's, however, with this character it is only skin-deep. The great thing about his performance and the film as a whole, is that his face will gradually change, becoming dark and chilly, just like Stewart's in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Stewart had lost his life momentarily. Milland has lost his soul to the bottle and he will stop at nothing to quench his thirst.

This really is a textbook example of the alcoholic's lies and schemes, a precursor to LEAVING LAS VEGAS, although there are people in this film who care about the drinker from the beginning. He just can't stop and we start to lose whatever sympathy we had for him because of how he treats other people. This is a drunk with a sober man wanting to come out, but Wilder's script dives deeply into the unpredictable outcomes of most alcoholics.

LOST WEEKEND was innovative and was almost never released because test audiences could not take the film's realism. The hospital sequence retains its horror, and Milland's withdrawal-induced hallucination of a rat in the wall was like him looking in the mirror. See this movie and you will come away with a completely informed and scary anthology of the antics of a hopeless alcoholic. This is amazing considering it came out of the old Hollywood system.