The Lost Weekend

The Lost Weekend
File:The Lost Weekend poster.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Billy Wilder
Screenplay by	Charles Brackett Billy Wilder
Produced by	Charles Brackett
Starring	Ray Milland Jane Wyman
Cinematography	John F. Seitz
Edited by	Doane Harrison
Music by	Miklós Rózsa
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	November 16, 1945 (1945-11-16)
Running time	99 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.25 million
Box office	$11,000,000 or $4.3 million (US rentals)

The Lost Weekend is a 1945 American film noir drama film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. The film was based on Charles R. Jackson's 1944 novel of the same name about an alcoholic writer. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay).

In 2011, The Lost Weekend was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Plot

Thursday - An alcoholic New York writer, Don Birnam (Ray Milland), is packing for a weekend vacation with his brother Wick (Philip Terry), who is trying to discourage his drinking. When Don’s girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) comes to see them off, she mentions in passing that she has two tickets for a concert, to which Don urges Wick to accompany her. Don heads for Nat’s Bar, deliberately missing his train, and then sneaks back into the flat to drink some cheap whisky he has bought, avoiding Helen who is worried about him being left alone.

Friday - Back at the bar, the owner, Nat (Howard Da Silva), criticizes Don for treating Helen so badly, and Don recalls how he first met her. It was due to a mix-up of cloakroom tickets at the opera-house, where he had to wait for the person who had been given his coat-check in error. This was Helen, with whom he strikes up a romance. When he is due to meet her parents for lunch at a hotel, he loses his nerve and phones a message to her, crying off. Presently he confesses to her that he is two people ‘Don the writer’, who can only write while drunk, and ‘Don the drunk’ who always has to be bailed out by his brother. Still, Helen devotes herself to helping him in his plight. Back in the present day, Don has moved on to another bar, where he is caught stealing money from a women's purse to pay his bill, and he is subsequently thrown out. In the flat, he finds a bottle he had stashed the previous night and drinks himself into a stupor.

Saturday - Don is broke and all the pawnshops are closed for Yom Kippur. At Nat’s Bar, he is refused service. In desperation, he visits a girl who had given up on him because he kept letting her down, but now agrees to give him a few dollars out of pity. Leaving her flat, he falls down the stairs and is knocked unconscious.

Sunday - Don wakes up in an alcoholics’ ward where 'Bim' Nolan (Frank Faylen), a cynical male nurse, mocks him and other guests at ‘Hangover Plaza’, but offers to help cure his delirium. Don refuses help, and succeeds in escaping from the ward while the staff are occupied with a violent patient.

Monday - Still broke, Don steals a bottle of whisky from a store, and spends the day drinking and hallucinating. 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 on his couch.

Tuesday - Don slips out and pawns Helen’s coat - the thing which had first brought them together - in order to buy a gun. She trails him to the pawn shop and finds out from the pawnbroker that he traded the coat for a gun he had pawned earlier. She races to Don's apartment and catches him just before he is about to shoot himself in the bathroom. He tells her their relationship is over, and she glimpses the gun which he has hidden in the bathroom. As they struggle for mastery of the weapon, she reminds Don of her love for him, and her concern that he should stop drinking. She is able to convince him that ‘Don the writer’ and ‘Don the drunk’ are the same person. He finally commits to writing his novel The Bottle, dedicated to her, which will recount the events of the weekend. He drops a cigarette into a glass of whiskey to make it undrinkable, as proof that he is cured.

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, the nurse in the alcoholic ward
• Mary Young as Mrs. Deveridge
• Anita Sharp-Bolster as Mrs. Foley (credited as Anita Bolster)
• Lilian Fontaine as Mrs. St. James
• 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 was initially released without a musical score. The audience reception was poor and the film was pulled from distribution. The studio brought in Miklós Rózsa who wrote original score for the picture. Upon re-release, the film was a success. The film's musical score was among the first to feature the theremin, which was used to create the pathos of alcoholism.

The film also made famous the "character walking toward the camera as neon signs pass by" camera effect.

Rights to the film are currently held by Universal Studios, which owns the pre-1950 Paramount sound feature film library via EMKA, Ltd.

Billy Wilder originally wanted Jose Ferrer for the role of Don, but he turned it down. Charles Brackett's first choice for playing Helen was Olivia de Havilland, but she was involved with a lawsuit that prevented her from being in any film at that time. It has been said that Katherine Hepburn and Jean Arthur were also considered for the role.

Reception

Box office performance

The film was a commercial success. Produced on a budget of $1.25 million, it grossed $11,000,000 at the box office, earning $4.3 million in US theatrical rentals.

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 four categories.

Category	Nominee	Result	Lost To
Best Picture	Charles Brackett	Won	—
Best Director	Billy Wilder	Won	—
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	Nominated	Lost to Harry Stradling for The Picture of Dorian Gray
Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture	Miklós Rózsa	Nominated	Lost to Miklós Rózsa for Spellbound
Academy Award for Best Film Editing	Doane Harrison	Nominated	Lost to Robert J. Kern for National Velvet

Cannes Film Festival

This film also shared the 1946 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 Institute

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 Milland, Wyman, and Faylen in their original film roles.

On March 10, 1946, three days after winning the Academy Award, Milland appeared as a guest on a radio broadcast of The Jack Benny Show. In a spoof of The Lost Weekend, Milland 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!"

External links

• The Lost Weekend at IMDb
• The Lost Weekend at the TCM Movie Database
• The Lost Weekend at AllMovie
• The Lost Weekend at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Lost Weekend film review at filmsite.org
• The Lost Weekend on Screen Guild Theater: January 7, 1946