The Lost Weekend (film)

For other uses, see: The Lost Weekend

The Lost Weekend
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Billy Wilder
Produced by	Charles Brackett
Screenplay by	Charles Brackett Billy Wilder
Story by	Charles R. Jackson
Starring	Ray Milland Jane Wyman
Music by	Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography	John F. Seitz
Editing by	Doane Harrison
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures (original) Universal Studios (current)
Release date(s)	November 16, 1945 (1945-11-16)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.25 million

The Lost Weekend is a 1945 Academy Award winning American drama film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. The film was based on a novel of the same title by Charles R. Jackson about a writer who drinks heavily. In 2011, it was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

Plot

The film recounts the life of an alcoholic New York writer, Don Birnam, over the last half of a six year period, and in particular on a weekend alcoholic binge.

A shot of the Manhattan skyline to an apartment, with a whiskey bottle hung outside a window. Don and his brother Wick are packing for a weekend vacation. Wick believes that Don, a recovering alcoholic, has been on the wagon for ten days. After Don's girlfriend Helen St. James arrives, Don urges his brother to take a later train, and urges him to go to a Barbirolli concert with Helen, while he collects his thoughts at home. Wick, having disposed of his brother's hidden supply of drink, reluctantly agrees, despite seeing Helen as his brother's girl. Helen, slightly mockingly, claims to be trying not to love Don while he is trying not to drink. On their way out of the building, Wick reassures Helen he has found Don's hidden supply of alcohol and points out Don is broke. A few minutes later, the cleaning lady arrives for work, but Don cons her out of her wages and sends her away.

Don stays too long at his favorite watering hole, Nat's Bar on Third Avenue, based on the legendary P. J. Clarke's, and misses the train he is meant to catch. Wick, effectively rejecting his brother, intends to leave without him, though Helen is wary of leaving Don alone for four days. She is very busy with her work at Time magazine. As Wick is leaving the building, he urges Helen to give herself a chance by dropping Don. Helen waits. Don sneaks into his apartment to drink and hide the cheap whiskey he has bought. The following morning he finds a message from Helen pinned to his front door, urging him to call her.

While drinking at Nat's Bar, Don recounts his history to Nat, who is reluctant to fuel Don's habit, though he easily relents. Don met Helen three years earlier at the Metropolitan Opera after a matinee performance of La Traviata thanks to confusion about checked coats. In his mind, during "Libiamo ne' lieti calici", the "drinking song" in the first act, the singers on stage are converted into a row of raincoats identical to Don's. His contains a bottle of rye whiskey. He leaves the performance early, and on collecting his coat is presented with a woman's leopardskin coat. After the performance ends, he waits until everyone has claimed their coat until he is able to exchange coats with Helen. They had been seated in neighboring seats, but evidently did not speak. She finds him rude, but they quickly develop a rapport, especially after the bottle falls out of his coat pocket. He claims he intends it for a friend. He accepts her invitation to a cocktail party. He drinks tomato juice and avoids alcohol for weeks.

Their relationship becomes serious. One day he is due to meet Helen's parents, visiting from Toledo, Ohio, whom he overhears discussing his character flaws in the hotel lobby. Overpowered by anxiety, he escapes into the phone booth as Helen arrives and, while clandestinely observing her, calls and asks her to go ahead with lunch without him. This incident caused his return to drinking. Later, after Wick attempts to cover for Don's absence by telling Helen that Don is in Philadelphia, Don emerges from hiding and confesses his alcohol problem to Helen. He recognizes himself as two people: 'Don the writer' and 'Don the drunk', who is dependent on his brother. Don explains that he dropped out of college, identified earlier as Cornell, because he was convinced he was already a Hemingway, a "great writer." As he began to doubt his writing talent, he found solace in drink. Don says he can only develop writing ideas while drunk, but he forgets them when sober. Don suggests Helen drop him, but his words only strengthen Helen's resolve to help Don.

The story returns to the present. Don cannot find a hidden bottle of whiskey, but discovers the name of a bar he has not visited before on a pack of matches. In order to pay his bill at Harry & Joe's, he steals a woman's handbag, takes it into the men's room, and manages to extract enough money to pay his bill. The woman, though, has recognized the theft, and he is identified as the culprit. He admits he has taken her money. The woman takes pity on him in his drunken state and does not press charges. He is told not to return and thrown out.

Don Birnam (Ray Milland) stumbling down Third Avenue, seeking to pawn his typewriter.

The next day, Saturday, Don's phone rings repeatedly. Don supposes it is Helen, but ignores it. Later, he tries and fails to pawn his typewriter, since all the Third Avenue pawnshops are closed because of Yom Kippur. Returning exhausted to the bar, Nat refuses to serve him. Don visits Gloria, another habitué of Nat's Bar, whom he had half-seriously propositioned at the bar and who has admitted being attracted to him. She is now angry over the dates he has broken with her, but after he kisses her in desperation, she yields and hands over a little money. He then falls down the stairs and is knocked unconscious. Coming around in the alcoholics' ward of a hospital on Sunday, he is confronted by 'Bim' Nolan who mockingly recounts the histories of other patients at "Hangover Plaza." Bim allows that admissions to the ward were more numerous during prohibition and offers Don a solution to counteract the effects of the DTs, which Don refuses. During the night, on his second attempt and wearing a stolen coat over his pajamas, Don succeeds in escaping from the ward while the staff are occupied with a more disturbed and violent patient.

Meanwhile, Helen sleeps on the stairs outside his apartment. Don always ignores his milk and newspaper deliveries, but Helen is awoken by the milkman. Don's landlady assumes he is on one of his benders. She tells Helen she would be better off if he were dead. Elsewhere, as a liquor store is opening for the day, Don snatches a cheap bottle of whiskey from an assistant clerk. He returns home and ignores the ringing phone. Later, while inebriated, he imagines a mouse appearing out of a crack in the wall and a bat flying around his living room. The bat attacks the mouse. Bim had explained earlier that alcoholics usually imagine seeing small animals rather than "pink elephants." Helen returns, alerted by a call from Don's landlady who can hear his screams. Finding him in a delirious state, she vows to look after him and spends the night for reasons of propriety on Don's couch.

In the morning, Tuesday, Don is again absent. Helen learns that Don has pawned her coat–the one that brought them together–for a gun. Once more, Helen returns to Don's apartment. He is eager to get rid of her, though she asks him to lend her his raincoat. Don claims their relationship is at an end. Helen, via a reflection in a mirror, spots the gun concealed in the bathroom wash basin and offers him drink as a distraction. Quickly, she is able to retrieve the gun, but Don wrenches it away from her. She reiterates her love for him.

As Helen tries to persuade Don to quit drinking, the door buzzer sounds. Don answers, and Nat enters to return the typewriter Don lost at Gloria's home the night he fell. After Helen persuades him that "Don the writer" and "Don the drunk" are the same person, Don finally commits to writing his novel The Bottle, dedicated to Helen, which will recount the events of the weekend. He drops a cigarette into a glass of whiskey rather than drink it. He recalls that while packing for his lost weekend his mind was on a bottle suspended just outside his window, he ponders, over a reversal of the opening shot, how many other people in New York City are in the same position as he.

Cast

• 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 Sharp-Bolster as Mrs. Foley (as Anita Bolster)
• Lillian Fontaine as Mrs. St. James (as Lilian Fontaine)
• Frank Orth as Opera Cloak Room Attendant
• Lewis L. Russell as Mr. St. James

Production and notable features

Wilder was originally drawn to this material after having worked with Raymond Chandler on the screenplay for Double Indemnity. Chandler was a recovering alcoholic at the time, and the stress and tumultuous relationship with Wilder during the collaboration caused him to go back to drinking. Wilder made the film, in part, to try to explain Chandler to himself.

The film's musical score was among the first to feature the theremin, which was used to create the pathos of alcoholism.^{[citation needed]}

This movie also made famous the "character walking toward the camera as neon signs pass by" camera effect.^{[citation needed]}

Rights to the film are currently held by Universal Studios, which owns the pre-1950 Paramount sound feature film library via EMKA, Ltd.^{[citation needed]}

Awards and honors

In 2011, The Lost Weekend was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. The Registry said the film was "an uncompromising look at the devastating effects of alcoholism" and that it "melded an expressionistic film-noir style with documentary realism to immerse viewers in the harrowing experiences of an aspiring New York writer willing to do almost anything for a drink."

Academy Awards

At the 18th Academy Awards in May 1946, The Lost Weekend received seven nominations and won in 4 categories.

Category	Nominee	Result
Academy Award for Best Picture		Won - Charles Brackett Producer
Academy Award for Best Director	Billy Wilder	Won
Academy Award for Best Actor	Ray Milland	Won
Academy Award for Best Screenplay	Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett	Won
Academy Award for Cinematography - Black and White	John F. Seitz	Lost to Harry Stradling for The Picture of Dorian Gray
Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture	Miklós Rózsa	Lost to Miklós Rózsa for Spellbound
Academy Award for Best Film Editing	Doane Harrison	Lost to Robert J. Kern for National Velvet

Cannes Film Festival

This film also shared the 1945 Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the first Cannes Film Festival and Milland was awarded Best Actor. To date, The Lost Weekend and Marty (1955) are the only films ever to win both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival. (Marty received the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm), which, beginning at the 1955 festival, replaced the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film as the highest award.)

American Film Insitute

The Lost Weekend was nominated for the following AFI's 100 Years... lists:

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (1998)
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes (2005):
  • "One drink's too many, and a hundred's not enough."
• AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores (2005)
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers (2006)
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) (2007)

Adaptations

The Lost Weekend was adapted as a radio play on the January 7, 1946 broadcast of The Screen Guild Theater, starring Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, and Frankie Faylen in their original film roles.

On March 10, 1946—three days after winning the Academy Award -- Ray Milland appeared as a guest on a radio broadcast of The Jack Benny Show. In a spoof of The Lost Weekend, Ray and Jack Benny played alcoholic twin brothers. Phil Harris -- who normally played Jack Benny's hard-drinking bandleader on the show—played the brother who tried to convince Ray and Jack to give up liquor. ("Ladies and gentlemen," said an announcer, "the opinions expressed by Mr. Harris are written in the script and are not necessarily his own.") In the alcoholic ward scene, smart-aleck Frank Nelson played the ward attendant who promised Ray and Jack that they would soon start seeing DT visions of strange animals. When the DT visions appeared (with Mel Blanc providing pig squeals, monkey chatters, and other animal sound effects), Ray chased them off. "Ray, they're gone!" Benny shouted. "What did you do?" Milland replied, "I threw my Oscar at them!"

In popular culture

• In the 1947 Bugs Bunny cartoon Slick Hare, a caricatured Ray Milland is shown sitting at a bar and paying for his drink with a typewriter. He gets small typewriters as his change.
• In Tex Avery's 1947 cartoon King-Size Canary, a mouse character is shown reading a book called "The Lost Squeak-end".
• In the Stephen Fry novel The Liar, the main character, Adrian, quotes The Lost Weekend talking about alcohol when he is expressing his love for a fellow boy at his public school to a friend.
• Elements of the movie were incorporated into Steve Martin's parody of film noir, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.
• Is referenced in various Stephen King novels & novellas, including 'The Shining' and 'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption'.
• John Lennon used to refer to the 18-month period during which he was separated from Yoko Ono as The Lost Weekend.
• In the Larry Brown short story "Facing the Music" the narrator describes trying to watch the film while his wife tries to make unwelcome sexual advances towards him.

External links

• The Lost Weekend at the Internet Movie Database
• The Lost Weekend at the TCM Movie Database
• The Lost Weekend at AllRovi
• The Lost Weekend at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Lost Weekend film review at filmsite.org