User reviews

Seedy bars, pawnshops, and an array of elaborate hiding places are the overriding images from this film. The Lost Weekend is a grimly realistic account of four days in the life of a chronic alcoholic, played by Ray Milland. In films of this quality one always takes away unforgettable images. The most striking is Milland's drunken efforts to remember where in his apartment the last hiding place he used is. Degraded and thoroughly beaten by his addiction, his last refuge is to try and keep it a secret from those who still love him. Billy Wilder's direction and script is brilliant - sympathetic, but unpatronising in his handling of a delicate and rarely dealt with affliction. Not until Nicolas Cage's portrayal of a man determined to drink himself to death in Leaving Las Vegas, has alcoholism been dealt with so well. Milland's performance is first rate - no hammy shlurring of words - and the atmosphere is dark and seedy like the bars he frequents. The scene where he spends several hours trying to find an open pawnshop on a public holiday is both harrowing and dazzling - it is remeniscent of the filmic image of a parched man trying to cross the desert.

The script and score are superb and the acting flawless. Ray Milland is riveting in the role of a man who is as consumed by alcohol as it is consuming him. He lives and breathes for it and all around him become secondary including his long suffering girlfriend.

There is always a girl like this in the life of a good looking useless purposeless alcoholic kept afloat by either a wife or other family member, in this case a brother who pays the bills and tries to sober him up and dry him out periodically.

The score is relentless and highly avant Gard for its time, featuring music normally backing sci-fi flicks. Some of the scenes are profoundly frightening, his stay in the drunk tank with a sadistic feminine male nurse outlining all the horrors that await him and his DTs which feature a bat biting the head off a bird.

Very well done. I felt the ending was a little too pat, that would be my only fault with this.

9 out of 10. Excellent.

In 1968, I was just 22 years old and driving a taxi part-time in Ft. Lee, New Jersey. One day, I drove Charles Jackson (author of "The Lost Weekend") from Englewood Cliffs, NJ to a run-down hotel in Times Square, New York City. I had seen and really liked the movie of the same name, starring Ray Milland, who did a wonderful job portraying an alcoholic on a weekend binge. The film was so realistic, I had a strong feeling that Charles Jackson had written the book based on his own life. I got up the nerve to ask him, and he told me that....yes, he indeed was the alcoholic portrayed in his book. We talked quite a bit about his life on the way into Times Square. He seemed like a very nice person, although he seemed quite depressed. However, it still came as quite a shock when, shortly after having him in my cab, I read in the papers that he had hung himself in his hotel room in NYC. That's an experience I will never forget!

The American cinema can count itself lucky with the wave of arrival of the best European talent in the days prior to World War II. Among the most distinguished directors that came to Hollywood was Billy Wilder who left a legacy, not only as a director, but in the many screen plays he wrote. One of his great works was "The Lost Week-end". Written with Charles Brackett, one of his most frequent collaborators, this is a film that dared to talk about a thing that no one dared to speak before: alcoholism.

If you haven't seen the film, please stop reading now.

On the opening scene of the picture we watch Don Birman, and his brother Wick packing suitcases for a long weekend in the country. We realize not everything is all right as we watch a bottle tied with a piece of string hanging out of a window. It's clear to see what was wrong with that picture, Don is an alcoholic! Wick, having enough common sense, wants to keep his brother near him, in order to control the situation.

Things get complicated with the arrival of Helen, the woman in love with Don. Helen St. James has been in a relationship with Don that has gone nowhere because of his drinking problem. Helen, as well as Wick, don't have the courage to have him committed to have him cured of his addiction. In fact, both are to blame about the condition affecting Don, but neither realize how deep is the problem.

In 1945 themes involving addiction were never told to the movie going public. Alcoholism was a vice that affected a lot of people in the country, but those were the days where people with drinking problems stayed in the closet, not daring to recognize how their lives were being ruined by the heavy use of alcohol.

We watch in horror as Don spends a weekend in hell going from one scheme to the next trying to get money to support his nasty habit. We also see Don Birman experience the worst night of his life when he is taken to a hospital, after falling down from a staircase. There, he sees first hand the horrors his addictions will bring to him. In a way, the exposure to the men in the hospital is a wake up call for Don, who decides to end it all because drinking has taken over his life. The movie should be seen by anyone suffering from this terrible social disease.

Ray Milland transforms himself into this troubled man. He gives an incredible performance. Mr. Milland has to be given credit in undertaking the portrayal of this lost soul in such a convincing fashion. By Hollywood standards, Ray Milland, an actor better known for his work in comedies, transforms himself into this Don Birman.

The supporting cast was excellent as well. Jane Wyman as Helen St. James is seen in one of her better roles of her career. Phillip Terry, as Wick, the kind brother is also good. Howard DaSilva, the bartender Nat, makes an impressive appearance in the film. Doris Dowling, as Gloria the friendly prostitute is equally effective.

Of course, this is a movie that shows Billy Wilder at his best. By filming on location in Manhattan, a rich texture is added. From Nat's bar we can watch the trams that circulated on Third Ave. at that time, as well as the 3rd. Av. El. The excellent black and white cinematography of John Seitz looks as good today, as it must have looked in 1945, when the film was released. The music score by the great Milos Rozsa is haunting without being too obvious.

This is, without a doubt, one of Billy Wilder's best movies, one that endures the passing of time. Mr. Wilder dared to speak out loud about something no one wanted to talk about.

... and not get tired of it. Ray Milland's performance is riveting and, if you are watching for the first time, the first scene will do nothing but raise questions, getting you involved. How did Don (Ray Milland) get to be such an alcoholic? Why does his brother have a right to say how he lives? What does he do for a living? Why does such a seemingly together woman like Helen (Jane Wyman) stay with this guy for three years? All of these questions get answered slowly as the movie unravels over one long weekend that Don was supposed to spend in the country with his brother, but instead spends alone, but thanks to ten dollars that Don's brother left behind, he does not spend it completely alone - he's got money to buy booze.

And yet Don doesn't plan ahead. He thinks enough to cover up the two bottles he buys at the liquor store with some apples that he buys to put up on top of the bag as he walks home so neighbors cannot see the booze, but the urgency doesn't come until he is completely out of liquor and out of the ten bucks to get more. And he is willing to do ANYTHING to get that liquor - he'll pretend to be interested in a girl in a local bar who is obviously crazy about him in order to get a few bucks, he tries to trade his typewriter (he's a failed writer) to a local bar owner for a drink, he steals money from a woman's purse in a nightclub to get booze, he even stages a faux hold-up (he has no gun) to get a bottle from a liquor store.

And that's it for the entire movie - Don Birnham and his quest for the next bottle eats all of his time and energy. Other characters are just instruments in that quest or are in the form of flashbacks to tell you how Don got to where he was in the first scene. And then there's that haunting score that runs the length of the film. Everything is brutal realism UNTIL the last scene. Maybe it was the censors, but today it could have cost the film some Oscars.

A couple of questions never raised. How did Don's brother Wick manage to support himself AND Don all of these years IN New York City? Didn't Wick ever long for a life and family of his own? There's got to be a limit to anybody's patience and charity, even if they are kin. Another question from an old film buff like me - Isn't it odd how the Great Depression and World War II magically disappear from sight in the past that Don is recollecting. 15 years of American history that effected everybody seems to have no place in Don's story. To look at this film, this shiny bustling post-war world has always been there. This is the turn of film from Depression and world war - collective struggles - back to the struggle of the individual with himself, the beginning of noir.

From the first shot of a bottle hanging from a drunk's apartment, we realize we are about to see a clever addict and a weekend of his demented exploits. Ray Milland has an honest face, not unlike Jimmy Stewart's, however, with this character it is only skin-deep. The great thing about his performance and the film as a whole, is that his face will gradually change, becoming dark and chilly, just like Stewart's in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Stewart had lost his life momentarily. Milland has lost his soul to the bottle and he will stop at nothing to quench his thirst.

This really is a textbook example of the alcoholic's lies and schemes, a precursor to LEAVING LAS VEGAS, although there are people in this film who care about the drinker from the beginning. He just can't stop and we start to lose whatever sympathy we had for him because of how he treats other people. This is a drunk with a sober man wanting to come out, but Wilder's script dives deeply into the unpredictable outcomes of most alcoholics.

LOST WEEKEND was innovative and was almost never released because test audiences could not take the film's realism. The hospital sequence retains its horror, and Milland's withdrawal-induced hallucination of a rat in the wall was like him looking in the mirror. See this movie and you will come away with a completely informed and scary anthology of the antics of a hopeless alcoholic. This is amazing considering it came out of the old Hollywood system.

As a recovering alcoholic (14 years sober) this remains as the first great film dealing with alcoholism. Ray Milland"s great performance shows realistically the insanity of drinking and the struggles. The promises and hidden bottles will ring true to anyone who has dealt with the problem. Billy Wilder's career was noted for his comedies but he showed in "Lost Weekend" that he knew how to deal with serious matter as well. The ending shot is a classic and will be memorable for anyone seeing the film. Check out "Days of Wine & Roses" as well.

I followed the line of good reviews and a high IMDb rating to this flick and feel I've been misled by the readership here. This story about one alcoholic's weekend binge merits a few props as it touches on the psychology of an ambitious would-be writer who never was. However, the core of this character study is marred fatally by overwrought dialogue, half-baked character development, a bland story arc, and a melodramatic Theramin-saturated score that would have fit more comfortably in a sci-fi shocker about nuclear swamp mutants than a closely studied psychological drama. The film shines most as the protagonist's brother, played subtly and richly by Phillip Terry, appears alternately as a care-taker either fed up and through with it all or empathetic enough to lie valiantly in order to cover up his brother's shame. Unfortunately, this performance gets little screen time. For the most part we are forced to trudge through a miserable weekend with our protagonist as if it were a rote lesson in "Alcoholism and its Downward Spiral 101." To cap it all off, we get in the end a reversal as facile, unconvincing, and dissatisfying as Tofurkey for a Thanksgiving dinner.

I take exception to previous comments that call the film "daring for its time" or "dated". It's still a very powerful film and there is nothing dated about the theme of a man who loses his soul to the bottle. It was a landmark film in its time and still is--there is no question about its holding power and the excellence of writing, acting and direction. Yes, even by today's standards! It outclasses more recent films dealing with alcoholism as it focuses on one man's problem with the bottle--a problem that affects all of the people whose lives he touches--particularly his loyal girlfriend (Jane Wyman in one of her best roles) and Philip Terry as his more conventional brother. The emotions are stark and real. The pity we feel for Milland's character is also mixed with disgust for his weakness. It's an accurate depiction of an alcoholic's struggle for the next fix--a never ending search for the next bottle. The pseudo-babble of a previous commentator attempts to inject disdain for the film as outdated and outclassed by more serious works. Nonsense! This was a stark and powerful film in 1945 and I have news for you--it is just as powerful and timely today! No other American film comes close to it. It is as searing an indictment of alcoholism as you are ever likely to see and Milland fully deserved his Oscar.

The Lost Weekend for 1945 was a pretty grim and realistic look at the problem of alcoholism. We've seen some pretty good films since like I'll Cry Tomorrow right up to Barfly, but The Lost Weekend still has the power to hold the audiences attention 61 years after it came out.

It was a breakthrough film for its star Ray Milland. Previously someone who had done light leading man roles, Milland plumbed some real hidden demons in the role of Don Birnam. A guy much like the characters Ray Milland played on screen, Birnam is a charming fellow and would be writer who can't leave the alcohol alone.

Billy Wilder was going to originally cast an unknown character actor in the lead role. However Paramount producer Buddy DeSylva said that in this part you wanted a likable leading man so the audiences had a rooting interest. Wilder who usually did not suffer interference from the front office with any grace, took DeSylva's advice and got Ray Milland with whom he'd worked with in The Major and the Minor.

Milland prepared for this part by spending a couple of nights in an alcoholic ward. Certainly showed in his performance. You will not forget Milland and his reaction to seeing the bat and the mouse while in delirium tremors.

Jane Wyman was Wilder's third choice after not getting Katharine Hepburn or Jean Arthur. She came over to Paramount from Warner Brothers on a loan out and got her first really good notices for a serious acting role as Milland's long suffering girl friend.

A recent biography of Billy Wilder said that The Lost Weekend was timed perfectly for an audience that swelled up with returning servicemen some of whom developed alcoholic problems after being through the horror of a World War. After being panned in previews with a little editing it opened to rave reviews on release.

It did good at the box office too and it won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor for Milland, Best Screenplay for Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett and Best Director for Wilder. After this triumph Wilder and Brackett both had their pick of good film properties.

I'm surprised that someone like Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino has never tried to remake this one. Seems like just the kind of film for them.

Milland's character is a writer and a key sequence is when he attempts to pawn his typewriter for a bottle of booze. Can you imagine doing that today with a laptop computer which is not only the tool he uses, but also has a memory of all the attempts the protagonist has made to write.

Might even be more powerful today.

Don Birnam (Ray Milland, in an outstanding performance) is an alcoholic writer spending a weekend in New York without the presence of his controller brother Wick Birnam (Phillip Terry) and escaping from his fiancée Helen St. James (Jane Wyman). This Billy Wilder's movie is a great and touching movie, since the first long distance shot of New York approaching Don Birnam 's room (and the Rye whiskey bottle hanging on the window) to the end of the plot. Wonderful performance of an inspired cast, marvelous black & white photography, a fantastic direction and screenplay makes this movie a masterpiece. Even the moralist end is acceptable for such an excellent movie. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Farrapo Humano" ("Human Rag")

Although in some respects some of the conditions and dialog from the Lost Weekend have become dated, the performances and the ideas behind it- plus the heightened style of it- make it work many years down the line. Oscar winning director Billy Wilder makes Don Birnem's struggle something that is unmistakable, especially if you've been around these kinds of people. Most of us have seen the drunk at the end of the bar with grandiose ideas and romanticized visions amid that need (nevermind enjoyment) of the booze. But the film is successful if only because it makes this obsession with the flailing writer Don as his major internal conflict, and that it goes deeper to something that is in many of us, even if we don't drink.

Basically, Don wants to get off alcohol so he can write his great book. Despite some advice from the "friendly enemy" (as I would call one) local bartender, and the girl Gloria, there is little hope for him it seems. He goes on a four-day bender, looking frantically all over the apartment when it's not in easy reach. This all leads up to going clean, which involves a truly paranoid-filmed sequence by Wilder (one of his very best).

It is almost all harrowing drama, and only in the minute moments when Don is completely unsympathetic does the film lose some of its momentum. But really, the film is as much about the psychology of this man, of the writer in desperation (though never wanting to admit it), and Ray Milland's performance (at least for the time) was daring enough to show as much as could be shown at the time. The film probes just enough into the subject matter to not become very preachy (I don't think Wilder's message is to never drink ever as much as one of keeping control of one's life and system), and at the core is just entertaining drama.

Ray Milland received his Best Actor Academy Award (on his only nomination) portraying a man struggling with his alcoholism in this Oscar winning Best Picture, which also saw Billy Wilder earn his first Oscars (Director and Screenplay; the latter shared with his frequent collaborator, and this film's producer Charles Brackett) and showcases Jane Wyman's dramatic acting ability for the first time, leading to her first (of four) Best Actress nomination in The Yearling (1946) (and award for Johnny Belinda (1948)). Also receiving nominations from the Academy were John Seitz's B&W Cinematography, Doane Harrison's Editing, and Miklós Rózsa's Score. Added to the National Film Registry in 2011.

The story follows Don Birnam (Milland), an unsuccessful writer, over a several day alcoholic binge. His girlfriend Helen St. James (Wyman) and his brother Wick (Phillip Terry) are unable to help him remain sober. Howard Da Silva is the bartender Nat, with whom Don converses with at various times; the others in the cast are the people he meets in the different stages of his drunkenness.

I can't imagine how this got greenlit back in 1945. It's almost impossible to imagine a film like this being made back then - the era where women weren't allowed to have their dresses crease around their buttocks and "show the shape of their behinds" (as Carl Reiner put it on commentary for the Dick Van Dyke show).

Seen sixty (!) years later, it still holds up amazingly well. A great deal of films from the 1940s and '50s seem outdated today, but the issue of alcoholism will probably never die... and as long as it exists, this movie will remain prescient.

Ray Milland delivers a powerful performance as Don Birnem, a recovering alcoholic whose girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) and brother Wick (Phillip Terry) have planned a weekend getaway to the country, to take his mind off the booze.

Don makes up an excuse not to go - he says he wants to be alone. His brother is suspicious of his decision, but nevertheless leaves without him. After the two leave, Don pulls a bottle of alcohol through his window, which was tied to a string by the window sill, hidden from view outside the apartment.

Don makes his daily visit to the bar where Nat (Da Silva) the Bartender serves his drinks. The more he drinks, the more Don spirals downwards into a hellish nightmare, complete with flashbacks to his past where he is reminded of the destructive patterns of his addiction.

I bought this movie a few months ago out of curiosity, mainly because I saw it had been directed by Billy Wilder. Wilder is most commonly known for his comedies like "The Apartment" and "Some Like It Hot," but here he shows he has a great eye for drama.

This is a superb film on all levels. The themes are gripping and important, the acting is totally uncompromising and the direction is top notch. I'd say it's one of the best and most underrated films of the 1940s; I had personally never heard of it before... I'm glad I stumbled across it.

'The Lost Weekend (1941)' wraps itself up a little too quickly to be entirely convincing, though the promises made in the finale could be just as empty as those made in the opening (making the ending much darker than it appears to be), and there is the occasional lull in pace marked by a repetition indicative of the alcoholism of the protagonist, but it's a daring and generally powerful cry against addiction in all its forms compounded by some excellent writing and performances (especially the Oscar-winning turn from Ray Milland) that really get into the psychology of the characters. 7/10

As great as Days of Wine and Roses is, to me The Lost Weekend is the more powerful film on the subject of alcohol addiction.

What is so striking is how much truth there is in how it deals with a sensitive subject and how ahead of its time it is (at a time where it would be so easy to skim over what is so cruel about alcohol addiction, which The Lost Weekend did not), while also being wholly relevant today at the same time seeing as alcohol addiction is very much a big problem now. It is a simple story told harrowingly (the nightmare sequence is still horrifyingly freaky by today's standards) and incredibly movingly, with nothing incoherent about it, with every aspect of the addiction explored realistically and plausibly (doing a better job than Days of Wine and Roses of showing the desperation and guilt). All in a way that is never sugar-coated or heavy-handed, difficult to do for subjects like alcohol addiction and films with a message.

The Lost Weekend is both grittily and sumptuously filmed, with first rate location work, it's a very visually pleasing film while also matching the film's tone perfectly. Billy Wilder's direction is also superb, he is sympathetic rather than patronising but is also uncompromising, it was also surprising that he managed to still bring his characteristic mordant wit to a story so grim, something that almost certainly would have jarred in lesser hands. Miklos Rosza provides one of his most haunting scores, it fits perfectly but is never obvious and repetitive, and the use of the theremin was effectively nightmarish but was equally effective showing the pathos of alcoholism (the main reason apparently for its use.

It's very thoughtfully scripted too, making the viewer think long and hard about the subject and motivations from the very first scene, and it also develops the characters compellingly. Nothing is black-and-white or stock, in fact it's straightforward but the characters are the kind that are flawed but with enough room for empathising towards them. The acting is very good. Ray Milland wasn't always the most compelling of leading men at times, however in a piece of casting that was courageous and pretty ingenious he gives a career-best turn, rarely did he show this much range or emotional depth than here. Jane Wyman contrasts beautifully in one of her better and more sympathetic performances, while Phillip Terry brings good realism as the brother. Contrastingly their scenes are more soft-centred, but they do still work.

The Lost Weekend's only real pitfall, from personal opinion, was the too pat and too-easily-resolved ending in a film that cried out for the complete opposite considering everything that happened before, it just felt tacked on.

Otherwise, The Lost Weekend is a wonderful film that came so close to a masterpiece. Maybe not one of Billy Wilder's best films, but this is only because so many of his films are so outstanding (even his lesser films are worth seeing) which is testament to how great a director Wilder was. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox

So fantastic direktor Billy Wilder in so many different kind of movies.

I love Billy Wilder and it pains me to write this, but here it goes: "The Lost Weekend" is, in my opinion, the worst Oscar-winning "Best Picture" I've seen, and I've seen all but about five. It is proof positive that Academy Award voters were as misguided in 1946 as they have been in the past decade with such embarrassing choices as "Gladiator," "Braveheart," and "A Beautiful Mind." "Mildred Pierce," another Oscar nominee in '46, also is dated, but it is well-written, compelling entertainment. I am sure that in 1945, "The Lost Weekend" seemed very daring and gritty. But today it just seems dated. Indeed, as I placed the DVD back in the case, I searched on the floor for mothballs that I figured fell out of the packaging in my haste to get the DVD into the player. "The Lost Weekend" is like a not-so-good high school play circa 1945. The acting is laughably overwrought. Jane Wyman's role as Helen "Oh-I-Love-Him-So" St. James needs a bottle, too: Over her noggin to pound an iota of sense into her head. And the music...?! I hate to be repetitive, but only one word springs to mind in describing Miklos Rozsa's score, and that word is "overwrought." The only two things I enjoyed about this movie was seeing the skyline and streets of Manhattan circa 1944 and hitting the "stop" button on the remote control when the credits began to roll.