Amazon.com essential video: "I'm not a drinker--I'm a drunk." These words, and the serious message behind them, were still potent enough in 1945 to shock audiences flocking to The Lost Weekend. The speaker is Don Birnam (Ray Milland), a handsome, talented, articulate alcoholic. The writing team of producer Charles Brackett and director Billy Wilder pull no punches in their depiction of Birnam's massive weekend bender, a tailspin that finds him reeling from his favorite watering hole to Bellevue Hospital. Location shooting in New York helps the street-level atmosphere, especially a sequence in which Birnam, a budding writer, tries to hock his typewriter for booze money. He desperately staggers past shuttered storefronts--it's Yom Kippur, and the pawnshops are closed. Milland, previously known as a lightweight leading man (he'd starred in Wilder's hilarious The Major and the Minor three years earlier), burrows convincingly under the skin of the character, whether waxing poetic about the escape of drinking or screaming his lungs out in the D.T.'s sequence. Wilder, having just made the ultra-noir Double Indemnity, brought a new kind of frankness and darkness to Hollywood's treatment of a social problem. At first the film may have seemed too bold; Paramount Pictures nearly killed the release of the picture after it tested poorly with preview audiences. But once in release, The Lost Weekend became a substantial hit, and won four Oscars: for picture, director, screenplay, and actor. --Robert Horton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - still the classic
Why was this movie not made mandatory viewing in every school in the 50s Well, we all know the reason. But it would have saved a lot of lives. Still the most vivid and moving protrait of alcoholism around. Not for the squeamish, but its a lot better to watch this than to watch someone bleed out from cirrhosis..Should be shown with every beer commercial on TV....show the bikini clad maidens after 10 years of alcoholic drinking..
Rating: - Moderation, Mista Boynum....Moderation.
This film is a wonderful work of art alongside the likes of Casablanca. It is amazingly ahead of its time and in your face. The "DTs" are presented in a raw and frighteningly real showcase. Every character is interesting and memorable and the warm fuzzy black and white of New York City places you right in the middle of our hero's struggle.
Rating: - Very Good Movie! Too Bad About the DVD!
This is one powerful movie that must have shocked the audience of those days and yet the message is so relevant and true to this day. We get a glimpse of what the life of an alcoholic can be like and for me it was almost like watching a truly scary horror film. It has been said that Billy Wilder did this film because he got inspiration from his co-writer in his previous masterpiece "Double Indemnity", Raymond Chandler, who also had a problem with the bottle. It wouldn't surprise me if he had Chandler totally in mind for the part of Birnam too as the two had a tough time working with each other ... Read More
Rating: - Dark and Depressing
I'm sure this was an important movie in its time, with its breakthrough treatment of the horrors of alcholism. Ray Milland does an excellent job of creating a character who wins our sympathy by his natural looks and class inspite of the horrendous things he does to feed his addiction.
What mostly bothered me is the unrelenting misery of it all. It is hard to really see why the Wyman character would stick with this man for three years if this is all she saw of him. Having played this role, in real life, I can testify that it takes a lot of good to put up with this much bad. It ... Read More
Rating: - Good movie, but inseparable from cultural fallout.
The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder, 1945)
While there's no denying that The Lost Weekend is a pretty durned fine piece of filmmaking, looking at it sixty years later, it's impossible to divorce the film from its cultural fallout. Screenwriter Charles Brackett, working from Charles Jackson's potboiler of a novel, did his best to bring out every possible melodramatic moment, and he succeeded tremendously. The problem being, of course, the public believe what they see, no matter how exaggerated for melodramatic effect. The Lost Weekend was one of the biggest steps in the diseasing of America ... Read More
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