Billy Wilder was one of the best directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Sure he didn’t have the versatility of William Wyler or the sheer style of Hitchcock, but he had a real skill for telling great human stories that made for terrific films like The Apartment, Sunset Boulevard, and Sabrina. And that’s certainly true of his 1945 Best Picture winner The Lost Weekend, a dismal and harrowing tale of a man tormented by alcoholism. With serious subject matter, an intense and melancholy atmosphere, inventive visuals, and a remarkable leading performance, it’s sure to have had a great effect at curbing one of the most common addictions there is.
Based on the novel by Charles R. Jackson, the story follows Don Birnam (Ray Milland), a hopelessly alcoholic writer who misses his train for a weekend vacation with his doting girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) and his burdened brother Wick (Philip Terry). So he spends the weekend sinking further into his vice, going to exceedingly low places and pitiful lengths along the way.
Drunkenness had largely been a joke in Hollywood movies before The Lost Weekend, an exaggerated character trait usually played for laughs. But no major movie was willing to address the addiction that could seriously harm a person’s life and the lives of those close to them. It would be far too bleak and depressing for Hollywood to touch. That honesty is what sets The Lost Weekend apart from most other films of its era. Supposedly, Wilder was driven to make the film after writer Raymond Chandler relapsed during the making of their 1944 film noir Double Indemnity, and you can feel that personal connection he has with the story, as well as a goal to help his friend and others in similar situations. Because this movie is downtrodden for a reason, to show in detail the effects of alcoholism so as to discourage its abuse. And it does that remarkably well. For a lot of the movie Don is a wreck, saddening in his desperation, while harshly judged by others. It’s the cinematic equivalent of being the sober guy watching people get drunk and seeing how awful it is. Most bars in town have cut him off before the film even begins, and the one bartender who will serve him (Howard Da Silva) is really harsh and frank about Don’s problem, as well as how it impacts Helen. This forcing of Don to confront the collateral damage of his problem is a really important point that I’m glad to see the film included.
The plot of this movie is also highly unusual for the time in that the momentum is not directed anywhere in particular. Rather it’s a series of episodes that all work to advance a specific theme. And thus there’s a refreshing unpredictability to the movie. It’s still confined by the rules of the time of course, to the extent you know it’s going to end with Don sobering up, but the road there takes a few detours. One of his earliest actions is stealing the money his brother left for the maid to spend on booze, but he quickly goes broke. From there he steals from a womans’ purse, begs another woman with the hots for him for money, and even after he passes out and is thrown in an alcoholics’ ward, he escapes to continue searching for liquor. At one point after giving up a brief plan to spend the day working on one of his unfinished novels, he attempts to pawn his typewriter (leading to an awkward anti-Semitic moment when he finds all the pawnshops are closed for Yom Kippur). If some of these acts of desperation sound familiar, it’s because they’ve come to be applicable to drug dependency and just any addiction in general –an element of the movie that makes it timeless. You could see any cocaine or heroin addict behaving in much the same way as Don, only in seedier environments.
Through these harrowing experiences, Ray Milland carries the movie excellently. He progressively gets more pathetic as the film goes on, but always with your sympathy. He’s aware, but unable to control his impulses and it makes for a very human character. Milland plays pathos here very well, and just the utter misery with deft frustration and remorse. He’s also really great in the flashback scenes to when he met Helen, even then revolving around booze, and his later revelation to her after hearing her parents wonder if he’s good enough for her. His characterization of his alcoholism as dividing himself into two people, “Don the writer” and “Don the drunk” is a very interesting way to set up the battle with his addiction. That scene where he confesses it all to her is very poignant, and makes her hope for him seem all the more futile knowing that in the present he’s gotten no better. I’d have liked maybe a bit more focus on what drove him to drink, which isn’t made as significant a point as his struggle. Writers’ block seems to be the catalyst mostly, but there are additional avenues to explore. Nonetheless, Milland absolutely sells the character and deserved the Oscar this movie got him. While this is mostly Milland’s movie, there are a few notable performances in the supporting cast from Philip Terry and Frank Faylen (Ernie from It’s a Wonderful Life) as a condescending nurse in the alcohol ward. Jane Wyman’s alright, but her character doesn’t have a lot of substance.
The technicals of the film itself however, are substantial. There’s some great brooding lighting in a number of sequences, and the cinematography is often a little unnerving. For example, one morning opens with a close-up on his eye and later there’s a medium tracking shot of him stumbling home that really lends itself to a perilous atmosphere. The shadowing is impeccable in a number of moments, but one scene after he drinks himself into a coma with a bottle he’d hidden in a light fixture is especially memorable. During his painful withdrawal he has a delirium Faylen’s character warned him about earlier involving a bat in his apartment. It’s no Trainspotting baby scene, but it’s good. And it all benefits too from the music, by the often overlooked Miklós Rósza. He uses a theremin here to convey the melancholy tone, and it’s not only effective, but has become a standard tool for stories (and parodies) when it comes to subjects of alcoholism. And getting that tone just right was clearly front in centre for Wilder.
The Lost Weekend changed the way films in the West talked about addiction. It’s unusual story, despairing tone, stylistic touches, and fantastic leading performance from Ray Milland makes it no surprise how well it did at the Oscars in 1946. Seventy-three years later, stories like this are still being told, holding a light up to serious alcoholism or drug dependency -hell I just reviewed some of that subject matter in A Futile and Stupid Gesture. The honesty with which The Lost Weekend was told strengthens Wilder’s place among the great filmmakers of his era, and sets itself nicely apart from a lot of the typical insubstantial fare produced alongside it.
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