The Lost Weekend

"Most men lead lives of quiet dieserpation, I can't take that quiet desperation"

The Lost Weekend has a special spot in film history for being the first big film to deal seriously and sensitively with alcoholism. Alcohol in cinema was usually comical territory up until this point, a source of mirth - the drunk was a figure to be laughed at (or sometimes laughed with) and people were yet to widely understand alcoholism in terms of addiction and disease. Even as late as 1980, Dudley Moore was still treating the drunk as fertile ground for comedy (Arthur), but it's fair to say that The Lost Weekend was the beginning of the end for the comical movie drunk. With an intense central performance from Ray Milland (who won a Best Actor Oscar for his effort but also scuppered his career) and a tragi-comic script that sparkles with wit and insight typical of a Billy Wilder film, The Lost Weekend is one of the cornerstones of American film history; a groundbreaking film that also happens to be entertaining.

We meet Don (Ray Milland) while he's thoroughly in the throes of alcoholism. He's meant to be recovering, aided by his long-suffering brother Wick (Phillip Terry) and optimistic girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman), but he conspires to avoid a tee-totalling weekend away through a series of excuses. From here we follow Don on his 'lost' weekend, a bender that starts small but slowly spirals out of control and into hell. He hits rock bottom, tries to steal a handbag, destroys his apartment looking for booze, begs for money, and finds himself in the drunk tank. Eventually he goes completely out of his mind - hallucinating, frightened, hyperventillating, unable to accept help from anyone and looking for a way out in the worst possible way.

In assured Wilder fashion, The Lost Weekend starts in the middle of Don's problem and moves along through the make or break point almost immediately. Whilst we get stuck into Don's bender we then also start flashing back to the beginnings of his relationship with Helen, and how he got to be in such a sorry state. My favourite moment in his journey comes quite early onl Don returns home with two bottles of booze. He hides one in a light-fitting and then pours himself a glass from the other before sitting down, he then smirks in delirious satisfaction before turning to look at the glass and the camera zooms in on the glass until it's right inside the whiskey.

This film really stands the test of time thanks to its mature treatment of alcoholism as a 'sickness'. Many poorer films have sought to explain the booziness of their damaged protagonists (before and after The Lost Weekend) as being the result of some tragedy in their past. It's an idealistic but misguided way to examine the problem though, and it suggests that alcoholism is merely a symptom of some other problem that can be easily fixed. Not so in The Lost Weekend! We spend some time wondering what's wrong with Don that makes him this way but it's untenable facet of his personality - he bargains, schemes, and sneaks to get a drink at all costs. He's defensive but he also romanticises drinking, and the sheer singlemindedness of his sickness even sees him unable to watch the opera without becoming pre-occupied with the bottles and glasses of wine being used as props in the production.

We step further back into Don's past to learn the inextricable parts of his character that led to this sickness - how he started out as a would-be writer but was never able to finish anything. He was essentially a dreamer who lacked the ambition to follow through and so he turned to drink as a substitute for the actualisation of his dreams. It's a self-perpetuating cycle, further demonstrated when he overhears Helen's parents talking about his lack of a job or a qualification, and he finds he can't face them as a result - coping with his loserdom by drinking.

For some reason the controversial nature of this film meant that Milland found it hard to get a lot of quality work afterwards. He looks a bit like James Stewart but sounds like Cary Grant, and it's easy to imagine him essaying a range of roles that would suit either of those stars. He evidently got the concepts behind The Lost Weekend, a big part of its success lies in his fantastic and realistic performance. The film is also memorable for its unusual score, consisting of pointed violins and otherwordly theramin. Don't watch The Lost Weekend hoping for a happy ending though, the film itself isn't about Don - it's about alcoholism. The point of the movie is to show us that alcoholism is a disease from which there is no real escape. It's not something that can be cured but more a sickness to be coped with.

DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, based on a novel by Charles R. Jackson.
KEY ACTORS: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen, Mary Young

RELATED TEXT:
- The Lost Weekend, a best-selling and critically acclaimed novel published in 1944. Charles R. Jackson wrote it as a semi-autobiographical examination of his own alcoholism.
- Wilder decided to make the film after working with the formerly alcoholic writer Raymond Chandler on the film Double Indemnity.
- For an altogether more sinister look at writers and alcohol, see The Shining.
- Other films that deal with alcoholism: Days of Wine and Roses, Leaving Las Vegas, Under the Volcano, Barfly, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Angela's Ashes and Hobson's Choice.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor (Milland) and Best Writing. Also nominated for Best Music, Best Film Editing and Best Cinematography.
Cannes Film Festival - won Best Actor (Milland) and Grand Prize.
Golden Globes - won Best Film (Drama), Best Actor - Drama (Milland) and Best Director.