Cortechba Overrated

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

oOoBarracuda I often take a fair bit of flack for listing The Lost Weekend as my favorite Billy Wilder film. With a career spanning over a dozen classics, The Lost Weekend, which took home top prize at the Oscar's in 1945, is often overlooked in Billy Wilder's accomplished filmography. The Lost Weekend isn't just my favorite Billy Wilder film, it's one of my favorite films of all time. Starring the ever alluring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman, the story of an alcoholic struggling through a 4-day drinking binge is a heartbreaking to watch. Don Birnam, (Ray Milland) is an alcoholic who has recently begun the road to recovery, or so he pretends. When his brother Wick (Phillip Terry) plans a weekend away in the country with Don and his girlfriend Helen St. James (Jane Wyman) the thought of being away from the bottle with no chance of a drink becomes overwhelming to Don. Maybe all Don needs is a send-off from the bar to get him through the long weekend. Manipulating Helen, who loves Don dearly despite his addiction, he convinces her to take his brother to a show promising to leave on the train for the country when they return. Once Don is in front of the bartender he loses all track of time, missing the train and his brother who took an angry cab ride home after being stood up by Don. Don spends a great deal of time reminiscing about his life as a young writer. Don abandoned college after a story he wrote sold to a magazine, only to find that same amount of success unattainable to him in his mid- thirties. Stopping at nothing to drown his sorrows about the unhappiness of his writing career and his life, Don's weekend binge leads him to the hospital, then back at home as he contemplates the only option for him that will seem to make everyone happy.The most obvious statement of the day is that Billy Wilder was a phenomenal director. He had a controlled yet inviting relationship with the camera that I truly appreciate. My favorite shot in cinema history is tucked into The Lost Weekend. The first time we see Don in the bar, it is indicated that time is passing solely by additional rings from his glass appearing on the table. The subtle beauty yet despair contained in that shot makes me pause the film at that moment each time I watch it just to be able to appreciate it for a few extra seconds. Wilder also captures a brilliant shot of a reflection in the mirror near the end of the film that allows Hellen to see just how dire Don's situation has become. There were also a couple scenes involving visions that were incredible. The scene of Don at the opera where he longs for the alcohol he stashed in his checked coat so badly he begins to imagine scores of his overcoat parading on stage was a dream to watch. Don also has a breakdown before falling asleep once back at his home where he imagines a mouse climbing out of a hole in his wall only to be attacked by a bat in his apartment perfectly illustrating the futile effort Don felt against the much more aggressive opponent of his alcoholism that he was facing. As for capturing the perils of addiction, The Lost Weekend succeeds tenfold. The Lost Weekend is a perfect double bill along with Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm which explores the life of a heroin addict. The Lost Weekend displays the family of the addict which is often a mix of enabling and tough love, the film illustrates the rage the addict often experiences when too many obstacles impede their next fix and the desperation of exhausting every seemingly available opportunity to get it. The audience is invited into Don Birnam's life when the camera pans his apartment windows from the outside before following the string attached to a bottle into his apartment. The string hiding a fix is a perfect metaphor for what Don's life has become. His life teeters on a precipice of resuming his writing career and settling down with Hellen or sinking deeper and deeper towards the bottle where "one (drink) is too many and 100 is not enough". We begin the emotional ride of the film outside of Don't life, then invited in for an intimate look at the weekend in which Don must make the decision that will dictate the rest of his life.This brings me to the Ray Milland portion of this review. I love Ray Milland, and The Lost Weekend was the first film I saw of his. I was sold on his style immediately and only grew to love him more when Dial M for Murder became another personal favorite. His reserved command of the screen works for me on every level. Milland's name is one I don't hear nearly as often as I'd like to hear thrown around as a screen great of the Golden Age of Hollywood. His portrayal of Don Birnam which goes from the brink of despair complete with tears and screaming to the acceptance of an existence beyond alcohol was more than deserving of a gold statuette at the '45 Oscars, as well as a place in my heart for eternity. Maybe it was Ray Milland's perfect portrayal of an alcoholic that kept me from taking even one drink my entire life, who knows.

blanche-2 There was a time when liquor flowed like water. There was such a thing as the three-martini lunch. In James Whale's "Remember the Night," everyone at a party is smashed and the next day can't remember anything about a murder. A woman I interviewed who dated Frank Sinatra said the liquor was everywhere in those days. In the series Mad Men we saw people drinking in the office. Alcohol was part of doing business. As World War II came to an end, many returning soldiers had developed the disease of alcoholism to deal with PTSD.In 1945, Billy Wilder tackled the subject with his film "The Lost Weekend" starring Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard da Silva, and Frank Faylen.Ray Milland plays Don, a writer with writers block who, as the film starts, is an alcoholic with 10 days of sobriety. His brother Wick (Terry) is taking him to the country for the weekend. Wick winds up going along as Terry begins his drunken weekend. Desperate for money, he steals the money intended for the cleaning woman. Ten dollars certainly went a lot further then - he goes into a bar and has quite a few drinks.Meanwhile, his girlfriend Helen (Wyman) is determined to help him and is furious with Wick for leaving and not helping him. "If he'd broken his leg, you wouldn't leave him," she cries. "It's the same thing. He has a sickness." He trashes his apartment looking for liquor he's hidden. He steals her coat to pawn it, and finally, in a heartbreaking scene, he pawns his typewriter (something Billy Wilder and other writers did in Berlin to make ends meet). His situation goes from horrible to more horrible as time goes on.Ray Milland gives a searing portrayal of Don, a man who says, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can't take quiet desperation." Usually a charming, light leading man, he shows Don's disintegration externally and internally, as he cares about nothing, only where to get his next drink.This was also a new kind of role for Jane Wyman, formerly a snappy blond. Here's she's a loyal, devoted woman, determined to help Don overcome something she probably doesn't really understand. As the film goes on, Don becomes even ruder and nastier until you hate him and you don't know why she doesn't leave.The New York outdoor locations are fantastic - one can see the Third Avenue el train, which was eventually taken down. The gray days, the dark bars, the pawn shops, the rain, the drunk ward, all demonstrate the darkness in Don's life. Brackett and Wilder's script is stark, tense, and powerful, and Wilder directed it in his usual focused way, keeping the action going.People laughed at the first showing of this film, but it wasn't funny then, and it isn't funny now. Others found it disgusting. Hopefully we've grown more in our understanding of this disease. With the sad stories of people like Gail Russell, Jeffrey Hunter, and William Holden, to name just a few, we see this self-destructive illness for what he really is - a killer.

Ross622 For alcoholics there is a lot of lessons to be learned in the film that earned Billy Wilder his first academy award for best director The Lost Weekend. Though not really a film that deserved to win best picture this movie knows a lot about alcoholism and how addicting it could be when people didn't know the effects at the time of it's release. The movie stars Ray Milland as Don Birnam an alcoholic writer who binges on alcohol for exactly 3 days straight, (as well as deserving his Oscar for proving the bad effects.). Though not a great film it also tells us how crazy a drunkard can really be. It's Milland who gives a better performance than anyone else in this film but the Jane Wyman performance is a little tiny problem with it, which that was in the ending scene when Birnam wants to kill himself but Wyman's character does one good thing and that is persuade him not to kill himself but the biggest mistake is that SHE TRIES TO MAKE HIS ALCOHOL ADDICTION A LOT WORSE THAN IT WAS BEFORE. Wilder does a decent job with directing this film, but one thing just leaves me with one question, Why did this film get so much Oscars including best picture that it didn't deserve?

mamalv What a movie and what a performance by Ray Milland. Don Birnam is an alcoholic writer who just can't get started on anything. He is brilliant and tortured by his own alcoholic demons. This is based on the true life of the writer Charles Jackson. If ever there was a more truthful look at a drunk, this is probably the best. The only other true look would be The Days of Wine and Roses. There are many light moments where Milland goes into line after line of how he wound up this way. How his brother Wick had given him a place to live and a few dollars for shows and smokes. Jane Wyman is the long suffering girlfriend who won't give up on him. Sometimes we feel that she won't give up because she needs to be right for him and herself. I like Howard DeSilva as the bartender Nate. Even though we despise him for giving the booze to Don, we really feel he does in some way care for this man. He along with Wyman see touches of a really wonderful mind being wasted in a bottle. Milland lost a lot of weight to play this part that was turned down by numerous big stars. He is still so handsome that even when he is in the depths of a alcoholic weekend we wish he would clean up and get back to his life. Many people do not realize that the street shots were from hidden cameras in store fronts and vans. So many people really thought that Milland staggering along was really drunk. In fact some people called the studio to warn them about his bender. Magnificent as he was in this film we had always wished that he had more dramatic parts like this one. The industry just never gave him the best of the best. Well deserved Oscar for this great actor.