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The Lost Weekend (1945) ft. Kieran B.

  • Writer: Thomas Duncan
    Thomas Duncan
  • 10 hours ago
  • 6 min read

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Guest:


Cast:

  • Billy Wilder, Writer/Director

  • Charles Brackett, C0-Writer/Producer

  • John F. Seitz, Cinematography

  • Miklos Rozsa, Music

  • Doane Harrison, Editing

  • Ray Milland as Don Birnam

  • Jane Wyman as Helen St. James

  • Phillip Terry as Wick Birnam

  • Howard da Silva as Nat

  • Doris Dowling as Gloria

  • Frank Faylen as 'Bim' Nolan

  • Mary Young as Mrs. Deveridge

  • Anita Bolster as Mrs. Foley


Background:

  • The Lost Weekend was released on November 29, 1945 (80th anniversary).

  • On an estimated budget of $1.25 million, the film is said to have grossed roughly $11 million to possibly finish as the #4 film of 1945.

  • Critics were also effusive in their praise of the film, Wilder, and Milland at the time, and the film would be nominated for 7 Oscars including Cinematography (Seitz), Original Score (Rozsa), and Film Editing (Harrison) while winning for Best Picture, Director (Wilder), Actor (Milland), and Adapted Screenplay (Wilder, Brackett).

  • In 2011, The Lost Weekend was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

  • The Lost Weekend currently holds a 97% among critics on RT, and a 4/5 on Letterboxd.


Plot Summary: The Lost Weekend follows Don Birnam (Ray Milland), a struggling writer whose life is slipping away because of alcoholism. The film takes place over one long, destructive weekend in New York City, as Don tries—and repeatedly fails—to break free from his addiction.


His brother Wick (Phillip Terry) wants to help Don get sober, but Don keeps finding ways to drink again. The one steady supporter in his life is his girlfriend Helen St. James, played by Jane Wyman, who refuses to give up on him even as his behavior becomes more desperate.


As Don wanders the city searching for alcohol, the film shows his downward spiral with unflinching honesty—highlighted by Milland’s powerful, Oscar-winning performance. The story builds toward a moment of truth where Don has to decide whether he’ll keep drinking or finally confront what’s destroying him.


Did You Know:

  • In 1944, Billy Wilder was traveling from New York to Hollywood by train and stopped off at the Chicago train station to buy some reading matter for the journey. One of these books was "The Lost Weekend". By the time he'd reached Hollywood, Wilder knew this would make the ideal basis for his next film. Billy Wilder felt the need to tackle the subject of alcoholism as a direct result of his experience of working with Raymond Chandler on Double Indemnity (1944). Wilder made the film as a way of explaining the condition to Chandler himself.

  • Billy Wilder claimed the liquor industry offered Paramount Pictures $5 million not to release the film; he also suggested that he would have accepted had they offered it to him personally.

  • Ray Milland checked himself into Bellevue Hospital with the help of resident doctors, in order to experience the horror of a drunk ward. Milland was given an iron bed and locked inside the "booze tank." That night, a new arrival came into the ward screaming, an entrance that immersed the whole ward in hysteria. With the ward falling into bedlam, a robed and barefoot Milland escaped while the door was ajar and slipped out onto 34th Street where he tried to hail a cab. When a suspicious cop spotted him, Milland tried to explain, but the cop didn't believe him, especially after he noticed the Bellevue insignia on his robe. The actor was dragged back to Bellevue where it took him a half-hour to explain his situation to the authorities before he was finally released.

  • It was only in later years that Billy Wilder discovered that the title of Charles R. Jackson's novel is a typo. It was supposed to have been called "The Last Weekend".

  • The first film featuring a theremin on the soundtrack--a musical instrument that produces a strange "wailing" sound that later became familiar to 1950s science-fiction film audiences. Miklós Rózsa used it in composing the score for the nightmare sequences.

  • For this film, Billy Wilder became the first person to win Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay for the same film.


Best Performance: Ray Milland (Don)/Billy Wilder (Director/Writer)

Best Secondary Performance: Billy Wilder (Director/Writer)/Miklos Rozsa (Music)

Most Charismatic Award: Ray Milland (Don)/Miklos Rozsa (Music)/Howard Da Silva (Nat)

Best Scene:

  • Bottle Out the Window

  • Nat's Bar

  • Coat Mishap

  • Breakfast Bar

  • Nightclub

  • Mental Ward

  • Hallucinations

Favorite Scene: Nat's Bar - Breakfast Bar/Coat Mishap/Nightclub

Most Indelible Moment: Bottle Out the Window/Bottle in the Lamp/Hallucinations


In Memorium:


Best Lines/Funniest Lines:

[Nat moves to wipe away the circle of whisky from Don Birnam's glass]

Don Birnam: Don't wipe it away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle. You know, the circle is the perfect geometric figure. No end, no beginning.


Don Birnam: Don's a little tight. Most people drink a little. A lot of them get tight once in awhile. [pause] Sure, the lucky ones who can take it or leave it. But, then there are ones who can't take it and can't leave it either. What I'm trying to say is: I'm not a drinker; I'm a drunk.


Ladies in the Street: That's nice young man who drinks.


Don Birnam: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can't take quiet desperation!


'Bim' Nolan, Male Nurse: It's like the doctor was just telling me - delirium is a disease of the night. Good night.


Don Birnam: None of that 12-year-old aged in the wood. Not for me.


Helen St. James: We're both trying, Don. You're trying not to drink, and I'm trying not to love you.


Wick Birnam: Trees and grass and sweet cider, buttermilk and water from that well that's colder than any old...

Don Birnam: Wait, please! Why this emphasis on liquids? Very dull liquids!


Wick Birnam: Don't you know that with you, it's like stepping off a roof and expecting to fall only one floor.


Don Birnam: Just give me another drink.

Nat: Mr. Birnam, this is the morning?

Don Birnam: That's when you need it most - in the morning. Haven't you learned that yet? At night this stuff's a drink. In the morning, it's medicine.


Don Birnam: I've never done anything! I'm not doing anything! I never will do anything! Zero! Zero! Zero!


Don Birnam: It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yeah. But what it does it do to the mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent. Extremely competent! I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michaelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer, it's the Nile, Nat. The Nile and down into the barge of Cleopatra.


Don Birnam: Let me have one, Nat. I'm dying. Just one.


Don Birnam: [Last lines] Out there in that great big concrete jungle, I wonder how many others there are like me? Poor bedeviled guys on fire with thirst. Such comical figures, to the rest of the world, as they stagger blindly towards another binge, another bender, another spree.


The Stanley Rubric:

Legacy: 4.5

Impact/Significance: 9.33

Novelty: 10

Classic-ness: 9.17

Rewatchability: 7

Audience Score: 8.5 (81% Google, 89% RT)

Total: 48.5


Remaining Questions:

  • How soon before Don drinks again?

  • At what point does Helen give up on him too?

  • Does his novel ever get written?

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