Best Picture: #18
Original Release Date: December 1, 1945
Rating: Not Rated
Runtime: 1 hour, 41 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Quick Impressions:
The Lost Weekend made quite a lasting impression on my grandmother. When mentioning it, she would always wince, shiver in dread, and say, “Ooh! It was a horrible thing!” That particular phrase “a horrible thing” is the same way she described Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. (She would sometimes say instead, “an awful thing.” When she saw Dracula as a young teen, someone walked out on the theater stage after the movie and told the audience, “Remember, there really are such things, you know,” terrifying her for life. She never wanted to watch that movie again, and she would never watch The Lost Weekend, either.)
When I watched it for the first time with my daughter, I expected it to be much more horrible. But it’s just a realistic look at addiction.
The Lost Weekend manages not to shy away from the real terrors of addiction without veering into R-rated territory (which would have been impossible in 1945). It’s probably the most intense Best Picture winner so far, except for All Quiet on the Western Front. A story like this told adequately today would almost certainly get an R rating because it has mature themes (and today, you’d expect something more visceral, graphic to go with them).
I’m always deeply sympathetic, actually empathetic, to stories about people struggling with addiction. I well remember being an eighteen-year-old in the middle of a psychotic break. It frustrated me so much that no one trusted me. Eighteen years of absolutely exemplary, entirely trustworthy behavior, and suddenly my parents would not trust me enough to let me out of their sight for even an hour. I only wanted them to go on some errand and leave me alone for a little while. So I could kill myself.
I don’t personally struggle with addiction, but I do have bipolar disorder, and in some ways, these illnesses look the same. They can be similarly disruptive. And the idea that this will never go away, that it will always come back can be similarly demoralizing until you get used to it and find personalized treatment that actually helps you. In both cases, you can’t get rid of it. You have to learn to live with it. In a supportive environment, Don Birnam may be able to live a happy, functional life, but he’s never going to be able to go out with friends and drink just one glass of whiskey. That’s just the way it is.
The Plot:
Don Birnam has a drinking problem. Although he never writes, he insists that he is a writer. He can’t seem to pull himself together, though, because he can’t get his drinking under control. With the help of his devoted brother Wick and his loyal girlfriend Helen, Don is trying to stay sober. Well, he’s trying to convince them that he’s trying to stay sober because they’re very vigilant, and he hates to disappoint them. Actually, Don is trying very hard to drink. Wick plans to take him away for a weekend in the country, but when he discovers that Don is secretly drinking again, he leaves. Despite the fact that Helen is desperately worried about him, Don spends the weekend alone on a drinking binge that doesn’t lead anywhere good.
The Good:
This is a great film. It manages to give us all the intensity an addiction story today would with none of the R-rated trappings that seem indispensable to creating a vivid picture of compulsive binge drinking.
My daughter loved it. Going My Way spent just one week in her top five. The Lost Weekend has already bumped it down to sixth place, overtaking the fifth place slot.
She had some particularly insightful comments. She said repeatedly that she loved the way the film shows us the whole story as Don Birnam experiences it. Watching, we experience his world right along with him. At one point, she noticed that his memory might not be reliable. (Whose is?) She said, “I like the way we see everything from his point of view. That’s my favorite thing about the movie. We may not be seeing reality.” Obviously, as her mother, I like hearing stuff like that. I find it wonderful that she’s having such insights, that we are, in fact, always getting someone’s reality rather than REALITY. But this movie is particularly immersive. It lets us know what it feels like to experience alcoholism. Don seems neither comical, nor demonized. We understand what’s going on from his perspective, even when his thinking becomes muddled.
We were always trying to keep up with the day of the week, but at a certain point, it gets trickier (just as Don has told the bartender it does for him). I said, “I’m not 100 percent sure which day it is.” My daughter answered, “I think it’s supposed to be like that. He doesn’t know, and we’re not supposed to know either.” With a laugh, she added, “Or maybe we’re just dumb.”
In that era (and today), so often we see alcoholism either trivialized or demonized. Drunk people are there for easy laughs or cheap scares. The Lost Weekend shows us a three-dimensional, human being struggling with alcoholism.
Based on my grandma’s description, I expected it to be harder to watch, but I’ve seen an awful lot of dark movies about addiction. (My husband and I practically died watching Beautiful Boy!) There’s quite a lot of humor in the film, and such artistry that it’s a pleasure to watch despite its subject matter.
For me, the cinematography was a real highlight. My daughter was beside herself with worry that Don would hang himself. She kept worrying, “What if this is foreshadowing?” She had a point. There’s definitely a connection between the initial hanging bottle of whiskey, and the idea that Don is metaphorically hanging himself through his increasingly desperate actions.
Visually, the film is magnificent. It’s shot in such a gorgeous way. Not only is almost every frame eye-catching, but the film is also dripping with visual symbolism. So many circles remind us of the wet ring created by the bottom of a shot glass. As the weekend drags on, Don goes around and around and around and simply can’t escape.
Ray Milland gives an amazing, Oscar-winning lead performance. He manages to descend into delirium and torment without ever looking stagey. The same performance would work today, and that can’t be said of all the acting my daughter and I have watched this summer.
Jane Wyman is also good as Don’s long-suffering girlfriend, Helen St. James. I always get excited when I see Jane Wyman in a movie. She’s in my mother’s favorite movie, Pollyanna, and when I was a child, my mom would always say, “She used to be married to Ronald Reagan.” For whatever reason, I don’t often watch movies featuring Jane Wyman, so when she shows up, I get really excited. I have mixed feelings about the character Wyman plays here, and I do wish we got additional insight into her character, but Wyman’s performance is good.
Howard Da Silva has some good moments as Nat the bartender, and Frank Faylen is incredibly creepy as sadistic nurse Bim Nolan.
Aside from Don himself, I find Doris Dowling’s Gloria the most intriguing character in the film. I’m not too familiar with Dowling, but I find Gloria very interesting. (I also love Don’s line, “Why imperil our friendship with these loathsome abbreviations?”) I think if the movie were made in 2020, we’d learn a lot more about Gloria. It’s a shame that Don seems to hurt so many women unintentionally. (I guess it’s really only two women, but they’re collectively a large presence.)
Best Scene:
Actually, the opening scene is very strong. The moment the scene began, my daughter asked in confusion, “Why is there a bottle randomly hanging out the window?” It’s a very effective opening, getting us hooked immediately. Don isn’t as inebriated as he gets later on, so Milland isn’t yet plumbing the depths, but his performance in this opening scene is already unnervingly authentic. We sense his absolute urgency to get his hands on that bottle.
Best Action Sequence:
I like what happens in the aftermath of pawning Helen’s coat. This is all quite well played, particularly the scene before a third person enters the apartment. The very ending seems almost too happy. Then again, the story isn’t over, just the movie.
The scene in the hospital is strong, too, very eerie.
Best Scene Visually:
I love it every time Don searches all his hiding places for liquor he might have squirreled away. At one point I said to my daughter in surprise, “I’m now wondering if The Seven Year Itch is parodying this.” About thirty seconds later, I thought, “Well Billy Wilder directed both films, so yes, obviously, this similarity is one-hundred percent intentional!” (Wilder is such a great director! I’m now thinking we should spend a summer watching Billy Wilder films!)
But best is the recurrence of the rings and circles. Early on, we see Don raise a shot glass, leaving a wet ring on the bar. Then later, we see multiple such rings on the bar. “Ohhh,” my daughter said gravely, “I get it.” Then the film continues to show us portentous circles everywhere.
I also love the way Don rediscovers where he has hidden the second bottle of whiskey. (We get a lot of lamps (round lamps) and projection, too. The projection I find interesting because the word projection, of course, can have a psychological meaning, too.)
Best Piano Player:
The piano player at one lounge where Don stops in for a drink absolutely deserves a raise. My daughter and I have been singing his improvised song back and forth since watching. She vowed to sing it any time something awkward happens.
This moment is good for two reasons. 1) It really is infectiously delightful. It made me spontaneously exclaim, “Raise for the piano player!” 2) It shows Don’s alienation so poignantly. He suffers alone. We can almost imagine another movie happening from the point of view of the people in the club. Some kooky drunk guy causes a disturbance and gets thrown out, wacky good fun for all! Let’s all sing! But Don’s living in a different story.
The Negatives:
Writer’s block does not cause alcoholism. Granted this explanation is only given by Don himself. When Helen suggests he see a doctor to find out what’s wrong, Don says that he knows what’s wrong. The cause of his condition is that he considers himself a writer but has been unable to write anything. If you believe him, then you must have a different view about the ending than I do. After all, if what’s causing his drinking is writer’s block, then when he starts writing, he should stop drinking. We’ll see.
There’s no reason to trust Don’s judgment on this one. If the two issues are related, I’d suggest that his drinking is the reason he can’t seem to get any good writing done. But I don’t think even that’s true. Surely in 1945, most of the reading public knew that alcoholism and writing could go happily hand in hand. (Well, I don’t know, actually what most of the reading public knew. But the writers knew it.) I mean, look at Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner! They all drank heavily, yet they produced wonderful writing. (How wonderful is, of course, subjective, but I mean, these men made a living as writers and their books got critical praise and wound up on all the English syllabi.) Those are the three most glaring examples that popped into my head at this second. But I don’t think it would take very long to fill a page with the names successful writers who also had drinking problems.
I’m a writer, so trust me. What’s interfering with Don Birnam’s chosen career as a writer is that he does not write. If you insist that you’re a brilliant writer, yet you haven’t completed any books and haven’t completed anything at all in over a decade, then the problem seems to be that you’re misidentifying yourself. Writers write. If you write a brilliant novel, then go on a long drinking binge, that’s very different than if you never complete the novel. From the way Don describes his problem, he barely starts his novels. He never writes much of anything. Sometimes he only writes a few lines. Maybe the problem is that he’s not a very good writer.
I read online that in the novel on which the film is based, Don begins drinking after being accused of being romantically involved with another man at college. I haven’t read the novel myself, so I’m not sure how accurate that bit of trivia is. To me, it would make much more sense to suggest some correlation between drinking and being gay in 1945 than drinking and not being able to finish novels. Like alcoholism, homosexuality is something that will not go away, and in 1945, that might seem problematic to a man. (Also, the pain from the ending of a relationship can’t be expressed to others if you’re trying to hide it from everyone, so that could create reason to drink, I suppose.) So I’m curious to read the novel. I don’t think being gay makes you an alcoholic anymore than writer’s block does, but I do see how a man in 1945 could more plausibly believe it does. And there’s definitely a sort of Freudian link between the two (not writing productively and not copulating productively) that seems like it might really appeal to someone in 1945.
But honestly, neither writer’s block nor being gay causes chronic alcoholism. When I have relationship problems or get writer’s block, I don’t spontaneously become an alcoholic. That’s as absurd as suggesting that because you couldn’t finish your novel, you suddenly became diabetic!
Now I can remember having post psychotic depression after a very draining manic episode when I was nineteen. I would try to write letters to my friends. I would get to the end of a sentence, then read back over it, and it would somehow sound sinister to me. My tone in reading it would make the meaning sound contrary to what I had intended. I would throw away page after page as the letters didn’t come out sounding right. I once actually mailed a friend a letter that abruptly broke off in the middle of the third or fourth sentence. She found this very troubling. So it is true that mental illness can cause the types of frustrations with writing that Don describes. And attempting to self-medicate mental illness could cause someone to drink. And then if that person is an alcoholic, he might not stop drinking. I don’t recall the movie Beautiful Boy specifically mentioning that the son starts using meth because he has bipolar disorder, but the real life Nic does have bipolar disorder. I really think the reason Don drinks to excess is more physiological than psychological.
Then again, I don’t know if I’m just being a product of my own age by stressing the physiological causes of things rather than looking for psychological ones. In thirty years, the narrative will probably become, “Grandma didn’t know the real truth we understand today.” (I’ll be Grandma.)
Now to me, the film’s ending highly, highly suggests that perhaps the movie does not have the same confused take on the problem that Don does himself. I’m not sure what the thinking on alcoholism was in 1945. I mean, I don’t know what doctors thought, how it was viewed and treated by medical professionals.
But—with no spoilers—I see this ending as something that two viewers could interpret completely differently. Some might say, “Oh, a happy ending! Great!” To me, it looks more like the prologue of a new beginning. I do think the ambiguity is intended.
I also think Helen’s role is problematic. If you ask me, her positive influence will be beneficial to Don. It isn’t the writing itself that helps him. It’s that she believes he can do it. I realize that some will complain that this movie gives people the false idea that a woman with enough love to give can cure alcoholism. Of course, that’s not how that works. But I also don’t think it’s necessary to abandon someone who has an illness. There’s a fine line between the negative and positive connotations of enabling. Some people do need extra help to live a normal life. If you saw a bat fly into your room at night and bite off the head of a rat, leaving blood all over the wall, wouldn’t you want someone to help you? Some may feel Helen is throwing her life away, but it’s her choice. I don’t think devoting yourself to someone you love is throwing your life away. But I do feel sorry for everyone in this situation. Don needs professional help. I’m not sure what help is available to him in 1945.
Overall:
The Lost Weekend is a fascinating film featuring an incredibly strong lead performance by Ray Milland. If you’re looking for a movie to watch with younger teens to start a conversation about addiction, this one is pretty good because you get all of the horror but none of the explicit content. To be honest, The Lost Weekend really makes me want to have a Billy Wilder film festival at home. I’m positive my daughter would love Some Like it Hot.