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| Don Birnam (Ray Milland) takes the first drink that will set him off on an epic weekend bender. |
Release Date: Nov. 29, 1945. Running Time: 101 minutes. Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder. Based on the novel by: Charles R. Jackson. Producer: Charles Brackett. Director: Billy Wilder.
THE PLOT:
"I'm not a drinker, I'm a drunk."
When he first came to New York, Don Birnam (Ray Milland) had ambitions of becoming a great novelist. Years later, he is a hopeless alcoholic - not so much struggling against the bottle as struggling simply to get to a bottle without interference. His long-suffering brother, Wick (Phillip Terry), plans to take him to the country for the weekend to help him dry out. But Don has other ideas.
Stealing money meant for the cleaning lady, Don makes his way first to a liquor store, then to a bar. He initially just wants a few drinks to fortify himself for the trip. Once he starts, however, he cannot stop. He soon finds himself all-in on an epic bender, a drunken odyssey that will take him to bars and clubs and hospitals, and that will see him move from petty theft to open robbery, all to secure just one more drink...
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| Wick (Phillip Terry) and Helen (Jane Wyman) try to help Don. |
CHARACTERS:
Don: Ray Milland's Academy Award winning performance is often mesmerizing. He is on screen for all but a few brief scenes, and he is tasked with carrying the movie despite playing a man who is almost constantly inebriated. Milland's nonverbal acting is excellent. When Don tries to sit still, he becomes immediately restless and fidgety. He is ashamed of his weakness, but he is still self-congratulatory when he succeeds in sneaking a drink, or when he believes he's gotten away with snatching a purse in order to pay for more drinks. For all Don's terrible behavior, others keep giving him chances because he has a degree of residual charm and wit. Late in the movie, even that drops away, leaving just desperation as he threatens a liquor store owner in order to steal a bottle of whiskey.
Helen: Jane Wyman is stuck with the thankless role of "the girlfriend." Helen falls for Don over some mild screwball comedy antics involving switched coats at an opera, and she is so taken with Don that she sticks by him for years of drunkenness, lies about drinking, and theft to afford drinking. And... that's about all there is to it. Wyman finds a few good moments, such as when she rebukes Don's landlady for gossiping about him, but Helen is overall the poorest written of the film's characters, more a plot device than a person.
Wick: Don's brother (Phillip Terry) is also his main source of support. As the film opens, we see that he's at the end of his rope. After Don sneaks off to a bar, destroying Wick's plan to get him away from temptation for the weekend, he complains to Helen that they've tried everything, and that Don is a "hopeless alcoholic." In flashbacks, we see that he was once supportive, even trying to cover for Don when he got drunk the day he was supposed to meet Helen's parents. In the present, he's given up... and after so much time and effort that has come to naught, I can't particularly condemn him for it.
Nat: Howard Da Silva, as Don's regular bartender, lends a sturdy presence to a role that on the page mainly exists to facilitate exposition. Nat is Don's audience when he relates how he met Helen, which led to his longest period of sobriety (six weeks). At one point, Don leaves the bar, insisting that he's going home to write. Nat wishes him well, and there's a sense that he's at least a little hopeful... but he is also entirely unsurprised when Don returns for another drink not long after.
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| Don waxes about how drinking makes him feel as Nat (Howard Da Silva) listens. |
THOUGHTS:
"Yeah, one. One's too many and a hundred's not enough."
-Nat (Howard Da Silva) accurately sizes up Don's request for "just one" drink.
The Lost Weekend was the first major Hollywood film to treat alcoholism as a serious disease. Its influence can be felt in so many later works: Days of Wine and Roses, Leaving Las Vegas, My Name Is Bill W., and so many others.
Alcoholics had previously been comedy relief figures, "funny drunks" who staggered around for easy laughs on the periphery of the real story. The Lost Weekend takes one of these "drunks" and puts him front-and-center for 100 minutes, and in doing so makes clear that his antics are anything but funny to himself and those around him. Ray Milland's Don Birnam is simultaneously the hero, villain, and victim of his own story.
Early in the film, Don attempts to negotiate with his alcoholism. When he goes to Nat's bar, he insists that he will stop drinking in time to make a phone call to move his weekend trip from the afternoon train to the evening one. This fails, his promise forgotten in the heat of his self-perceived brilliance as he waxes on about literary figures. He hides bottles so that his girlfriend and brother won't find them; the film opens with the image of a bottle hanging outside the apartment window. Later, when he purchases two bottles, he hides one in a ceiling light fixture - only to later forget where he stashed it, prompting him to make a total wreck of his home while searching for it.
Director Billy Wilder's film noir classic Double Indemnity should have won Best Picture for 1944. Wilder applies several of the same techniques here. Don lurks in shadows like a criminal as he waits for Wick and Helen to leave the building so that he can sneak up unobserved. When Don struggles against an available bottle, the music score rises with the tension of a foul deed about to be committed, and crescendos when he gives into his addiction and drinks. When Don eventually finds himself in the drunk ward of a hospital, the scene is much like one from a horror movie - particularly when a patient begins screaming as he hallucinates himself covered with insects.
Wilder also puts in moments of humor. In flashback, we see Don at an opera. He squirms uncomfortably as every character on stage holds up a full wine glass. His discomfort increases until suddenly we see all the characters replaced by replicas of Don's own raincoat, with its bottle hidden away in an inside pocket. It's a funny moment, but it also shows the more insidious side of Don's sickness: Even when he's not drinking, he's thinking about drinking, and moments such as this pull us into his mindset so that we come to comprehend all that he's going through.
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| Don gives in completely as he guzzles down a full bottle. |
A VICTIM OF ITS OWN SUCCESS:
All of these details and visual and audio touches work in The Lost Weekend's favor. Billy Wilder's direction and Ray Milland's performance go a long way toward helping this film to hold up... at least, to an extent.
There's just one problem, but it is a big one: You just can't replicate the experience of watching this in 1945. At the time, it was a jolt to audiences. Those who had struggled with this addiction saw their own issues finally reflected on screen, as did their friends and family. Those who had dismissed "drunks" as being simply morally weak saw that there was much more to it than that.
More than 75 years on, however, all of this is familiar ground. Many films have been made on this topic, and several of them are simply more engaging than this one. Even discounting the tacked-on happy ending (which likely rang false even at the time), from a modern standpoint The Lost Weekend is more a movie to respect than one to actually become immersed in.
OVERALL:
The Lost Weekend stands as an important historical piece. Its influence can still be felt today, and film aficionados should definitely view it not only for its significance but for some fine moments of film technique.
Even so, I can't quite fully endorse it as a movie for modern viewers to sit down and watch. Much of it is effective. However, its 100 minutes slowly become an endurance test, and too many other movies have surpassed its accomplishments.
Overall Rating: 6/10. I respect this movie - but I'm fairly certain that I will never choose to rewatch it.
Best Motion Picture - 1944: Going My Way
Best Motion Picture - 1946: The Best Years of Our Lives
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