The practice of films harvesting Oscars on account of their main characters being struck with physical or mental affliction is something many find annoying today, but it is hardly limited to our times. It is a long tradition that dates to The Lost Weekend, the celebrated 1945 drama directed by Billy Wilder, best known as the first major Hollywood film to tackle the issue of alcoholism seriously.
The film is based on the 1944 semi-autobiographical novel by Charles S. Jackson. The plot is set in New York City, where the protagonist Don Birnam (played by Ray Milland) has spent years trying to become a famous writer. His efforts have failed, mainly due to excessive drinking that became even more excessive owing to alcohol-fuelled writer’s block. Don lives in an apartment paid for by his brother Wick (Philip Terry), whom he is due to accompany for a weekend in the country after managing to stay sober for ten days. Despite all the precautions taken by his long-suffering girlfriend Helen St. James (played by Jane Wyman) and Wick, Don manages to leave the apartment and get just enough money to visit the nearest bar. From there he begins a four-day drinking spree during which he disgraces himself, cheats and steals to get alcohol, is brought to a mental hospital, and comes right to the edge of suicide.
Billy Wilder is considered one of the greatest Hollywood directors of the 20th century, but his most popular and recognisable films are comedies. Yet, especially in the first period of his career, Wilder showed a propensity for much more serious overtones and darker subject matter. In the case of The Lost Weekend, he was attracted to Jackson’s novel because its theme resonated with his experiences during his previous film Double Indemnity, when he clashed with the screenwriter and famous detective novelist Raymond Chandler, a conflict fuelled by Chandler’s rampant alcoholism. Until that time, Hollywood had not treated alcoholism seriously, partly because US society was still deeply traumatised by the colossal failure to curb it during Prohibition. Hollywood films instead began to treat drinking as mostly harmless fun, like with the protagonists of The Thin Man, or, at worst, portrayed drunks as a source of light ridicule. Wilder and his screenwriter Charles Brackett this time took a realistic and, consequently, much darker approach. Despite being shot almost entirely in studios (with some location shots in New York City thrown in for good measure), The Lost Weekend tries to give a “slice of life” atmosphere of a modern American metropolis with its bars, pawn shops and mental hospitals – places that are unavoidable if someone takes the same path as Don Birnam.
Brackett’s script portrays this dark picture of alcoholism in a very clever and efficient way, starting with a protagonist who seems normal, with only a few odd but increasingly disturbing details, like a bottle hidden outside the window, alerting the audience that not everything is all right with him. Sharp and intelligent dialogue provides more than sufficient exposition, and Wilder later in the film adds Don’s narration of the story of how he got to his low point to the cynical bartender Nat (played by Howard da Silva), using flashbacks to flesh out the character and his background further. Excellent black-and-white cinematography by John F. Seitz and a haunting musical score by Miklos Rozsa, one of the first to use the electronic instrument known as the theremin, add a lot to the atmosphere of doom that culminates in scenes near the end, when Don witnesses horrors in the hospital ward for alcoholics and, later, when he experiences delirium tremens himself.
There is very little humour in the film, and what there is usually of a darker variety, like the almost surreal scene when Don watches Verdi’s La Traviata in the theatre and, thanks to the famous “Libbiamo ne’i lieti calici” (a.k.a. the “Champagne aria”), is instantly reminded of his embarrassing and insatiable cravings. The Lost Weekend is a powerful film, and it draws a lot of strength from the cast, most notably Ray Milland. Known until that time mostly as something of a matinee idol, Milland very reluctantly took this serious and dark role of a man drowning in self-pity, self-degradation and behaviour that is destructive both to himself and the people around him. But he approached the challenge with the utmost professionalism, including a short stint in a New York City psychiatric hospital where he studied alcoholics and their manners. The result of this effort was truly impressive – he played Don as a character who could be deceptively normal, charming when he drinks enough alcohol and pathetic when the alcohol shows its destructive effects. Milland deservedly won an Oscar for his role, which was accompanied by Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The Lost Weekend is a strong, but not perfect, film. The most problematic element is the underwritten role of Helen St. James, whose years-long commitment to a self-destructive man is never properly explained, and the character seems like a cliché despite the best efforts of Jane Wyman. There are scenes where The Lost Weekend shows its age, like Don’s hallucinations, depicted with unconvincing special effects. The finale, in which the protagonist and the audience are rewarded with a happy ending, also looks too conventional and perhaps melodramatic for more cynical viewers today. Yet, despite those flaws, The Lost Weekend easily won over not only the critics of its time (a victory soon confirmed by the Grand Prix at the very first Cannes Film Festival) but also the general public, becoming a great hit. It is argued that a contributing factor to the film’s success could be found in the masses of young men who were returning from the battlefields of the recently finished Second World War and finding that new battles awaited them in civilian life, including those with alcohol that made forgetting war horrors deceptively easier. Many of them could identify with and relate to the ordeal of the protagonist. But even without its historical context, The Lost Weekend is one of the finer pieces of Classic Hollywood history that can be recommended to today’s viewers.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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