Director: Billy Wilder
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Top Billed Actors: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry
Won 4 Oscars:
Best Motion Picture - Paramount
Best Director - Billy Wilder
Best Actor - Ray Milland
Best Screenplay - Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
Nominated for 3 more:
Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture - Miklós Rózsa
Best Cinematography, Black-and-White - John F. Seitz
Best Film Editing - Doane Harrison
Plot: A New York writer can't help himself but to drink and drink and drink over a nice, long weekend.
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Top Billed Actors: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry
Won 4 Oscars:
Best Motion Picture - Paramount
Best Director - Billy Wilder
Best Actor - Ray Milland
Best Screenplay - Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
Nominated for 3 more:
Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture - Miklós Rózsa
Best Cinematography, Black-and-White - John F. Seitz
Best Film Editing - Doane Harrison
Plot: A New York writer can't help himself but to drink and drink and drink over a nice, long weekend.
After going 0 for 7 in the prior year's Awards, the next Billy Wilder film would fare much better when The Lost Weekend (1945) won four awards, including the night's top honors as Best Picture. In fact, this is the first time somebody won for Best Director and Best Screenplay for the same film. Wilder would go on to win even more Oscars, four more in fact, but here is the first huge winner of his career after he decided to become a director. The Academy wasn't the only body heaping on the accolades for this film. It won the top prize at the inaugural Cannes Film Festival (sharing this honor with ten other films), which makes it one of only three movies that would do this and go on to win Best Picture. For the second year in a row, the Golden Globes would agree on a Best Picture winner when this got the top prize at their 3rd awards. Critics joined the parade too - this film topped the Film Daily Top 10 Annual Poll as well as making the annual National Board of Review List and winning the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film. No matter what angle you view The Lost Weekend, it was an unequivocal success and clearly the movie of 1945.
Wilder has a lot of people to thank for this success but the idea came to him when working with Raymond Chandler on the aforementioned 0 for 7 Double Indemnity (1944). Chandler was a recovering alcoholic but the stress and frustrations of working on that script caused him to pick up the bottle again; and then Wilder picked up the typewriter. This screenplay is one of the best we've seen in this project. For the time, alcoholism seemed to be a pretty taboo topic. There were likely disagreements with the idea that it is a disease that some people have little control over. People without addictions, like myself, find this topic difficult to comprehend but the screenplay, adapted by Wilder and Charles Brackett from Charles R. Jackson's first novel, presents the scenarios and talking points necessary to help get us there. Before highlighting these scenarios, I first need to commend Ray Milland. To date in the Project, I've only seen drunkards played to comedic effect. Even with the first Best Picture winner (Wings (1927)), there is an elaborate drinking scene with mesmerizing special effects that is played for laughs. But Milland softens this perception and deftly defines a dramatic drunk - one that can be sympathized with, pitied, hated, loved, and everything in between. It's a complex performance for a complex character. Back to the situations that portrays the gamut of alcoholism: the thought of being in control of the liquor, thinking just a little will satisfy the urge, hiding bottles for later, creating multiple personas, hiding from loved ones, acting out of desperation, acting selfishly, self pity, the list goes on and on. Milland's Don Birnam is constantly evolving and right when we think we understand his plight, an extensive flashback provides even more heartbreaking context. What supplements his headspace is the score by Miklós Rózsa. I'm glad that I watch these Oscar movies in premiere date order because I got a hint of what Rózsa was capable of with the new-to-film theremin. He used it quite a bit in Spellbound (1945), for which he won the Oscar for, but it's used to even greater effect here. The theremin sounded like Birnam's betraying and helpless thoughts whenever he was about to turn to liquor. There were also test screenings of the movie without the eventual score and audiences laughed at it. It was Rózsa's contributions that turned the tide and gave the story dramatic heft.
There isn't much I can criticize negatively here. But two groups who did view it negatively were the liquor industry and temperance organizations. If both sides of this issue are against the film, then you know the art succeeds. There's also a nifty sequence that portrays delirium tremens (DTs). I didn't know that people who go through alcohol withdrawal would hallucinate that vividly. The special effects of these hallucinations as well as the crowded setting in the hospital gives this section of the movie a psychological horror feel. It's a harrowing sequence of scenes that is again masterfully acted by the exasperated and frightened Milland. To round out this film's legacy, I would be remiss to point out a shot that is used quite a bit - the "character walking toward the camera in a daze as time passes" effect. John F. Seitz would lose the Cinematography Oscar, but it was one of the more exceptional years in that category.
Overall, Billy Wilder's absolute smash of a success depicts the many stages of alcoholism through Ray Milland's nuanced and best performance, Miklós Rózsa's theremin-laced underscore, and a series of scenarios that allows this complicated character room to develop and amaze.
My Score: 9/10
Wilder has a lot of people to thank for this success but the idea came to him when working with Raymond Chandler on the aforementioned 0 for 7 Double Indemnity (1944). Chandler was a recovering alcoholic but the stress and frustrations of working on that script caused him to pick up the bottle again; and then Wilder picked up the typewriter. This screenplay is one of the best we've seen in this project. For the time, alcoholism seemed to be a pretty taboo topic. There were likely disagreements with the idea that it is a disease that some people have little control over. People without addictions, like myself, find this topic difficult to comprehend but the screenplay, adapted by Wilder and Charles Brackett from Charles R. Jackson's first novel, presents the scenarios and talking points necessary to help get us there. Before highlighting these scenarios, I first need to commend Ray Milland. To date in the Project, I've only seen drunkards played to comedic effect. Even with the first Best Picture winner (Wings (1927)), there is an elaborate drinking scene with mesmerizing special effects that is played for laughs. But Milland softens this perception and deftly defines a dramatic drunk - one that can be sympathized with, pitied, hated, loved, and everything in between. It's a complex performance for a complex character. Back to the situations that portrays the gamut of alcoholism: the thought of being in control of the liquor, thinking just a little will satisfy the urge, hiding bottles for later, creating multiple personas, hiding from loved ones, acting out of desperation, acting selfishly, self pity, the list goes on and on. Milland's Don Birnam is constantly evolving and right when we think we understand his plight, an extensive flashback provides even more heartbreaking context. What supplements his headspace is the score by Miklós Rózsa. I'm glad that I watch these Oscar movies in premiere date order because I got a hint of what Rózsa was capable of with the new-to-film theremin. He used it quite a bit in Spellbound (1945), for which he won the Oscar for, but it's used to even greater effect here. The theremin sounded like Birnam's betraying and helpless thoughts whenever he was about to turn to liquor. There were also test screenings of the movie without the eventual score and audiences laughed at it. It was Rózsa's contributions that turned the tide and gave the story dramatic heft.
There isn't much I can criticize negatively here. But two groups who did view it negatively were the liquor industry and temperance organizations. If both sides of this issue are against the film, then you know the art succeeds. There's also a nifty sequence that portrays delirium tremens (DTs). I didn't know that people who go through alcohol withdrawal would hallucinate that vividly. The special effects of these hallucinations as well as the crowded setting in the hospital gives this section of the movie a psychological horror feel. It's a harrowing sequence of scenes that is again masterfully acted by the exasperated and frightened Milland. To round out this film's legacy, I would be remiss to point out a shot that is used quite a bit - the "character walking toward the camera in a daze as time passes" effect. John F. Seitz would lose the Cinematography Oscar, but it was one of the more exceptional years in that category.
Overall, Billy Wilder's absolute smash of a success depicts the many stages of alcoholism through Ray Milland's nuanced and best performance, Miklós Rózsa's theremin-laced underscore, and a series of scenarios that allows this complicated character room to develop and amaze.
My Score: 9/10