The Lost Weekend was co-written by director Billy Wilder and Charles Bracket, author of the novel of the same name. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. It stars Ray Milland as Don Birnam, a writer and long-time alcoholic, who will lie, cheat, and steal to get some gin with vermouth or a glass of rye, neat.
Buy The Lost Weekend Blu-rayThe Lost Weekend opens on a Thursday afternoon in the apartment belonging to Don’s brother, Wick (Phillip Terry). Don has lived with Wick for years while he struggles with alcoholism. The two men are packing for a weekend vacation. A bottle of booze dangles against the wall outside by a thin cord from an open window. Don would do anything to get to that bottle, but he is putting on a show of sobriety for Wick and Don’s girlfriend of many years, Helen (Jane Wyman).
Helen mentions that she has tickets for a show that evening and Don, claiming he just needs some time alone without alcohol, convinces Helen and Wick to go together. The vacation will be bumped back a little bit when they take a later train. But before they get out of the apartment, Wick notices the thin rope attached to the window handle, pulls it, and finds Don’s stash. Wick is furious, pours out the liquor, and, believing Don has no more hidden bottles and no money, leaves with Helen to go to the show.
But Don is incredibly resourceful when it comes to money for liquor, and it isn’t long before he has ten dollars to his name and all that can be bought for ten dollars in 1945. Within the hour, he is walking drunk at Nat’s Pub down the street. He misses his train, and Wick, finally at his wit’s end, leaves for his solo weekend vacation. Helen is a fighter, and vows to stay by the front door to the apartment building all night if she has to. And she has to because Don is smart and manipulative and a snake when he needs to be, and he plans on spending the entire long weekend dead drunk.
The Lost Weekend is a series of hellish landscapes as Don navigates his way from bar to liquor store and pawn shop to prostitute’s den. Helen is in and out of his life trying to convince him to finally beat down liquor forever. But Don believes he is two men: Don the Drunk, a ne’er-do-well, who is bad as a boyfriend, brother, and friend; and then there is Don the Writer who wants to get started on the great American novel about the alcohol-addicted mind. The tension is constantly ratcheted up through dark rooms and shadowy corridors. It is film noir where the bad guy is the protagonist, down and out Don the Drunk. Highly recommended.
