| Jackson Stern |
The Lost Weekend plays on glorious 35mm at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, February 23rd, through Tuesday, February 25th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
Like many self-described “film nerds”, I grew up with a great admiration for the work of Billy Wilder. Around the time I was thirteen or fourteen, I was watching Sunset Boulevard monthly, completely enraptured by the witty dialogue, the strangeness of it (few things captured my adolescent imagination as the chimp funeral did), and of course, its darkness. The idea that a film from 1950 could be this cynical yet also this deliriously entertaining was a very foreign concept to me at that time. It thus introduced me to the wonderful world of Wilder along with many of his contemporaries and disciples. I soon discovered classics like Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment, the screenplay to which I still consider to be one of, if not the greatest American one ever written. But it wasn’t until I was eighteen, just days after graduating high school, that I discovered his most successful films, The Lost Weekend (1945). I went in expecting a comedy with some dark underpinnings just like Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, and, to an extent, Some Like It Hot (a hilarious film with a shockingly morose opening movement). What I got, however, was something a lot more pained and honest, the type of mood you’d rarely see in Hollywood films until the studios collapsed in the late 1960s.
After an opening shot which is strikingly similar to the opening of Hitchcock’s Psycho (though, Hitch’s film came out fifteen years after Wilder’s), we meet the hero of our story: writer turned alcoholic Don Birnam (played by an Oscar winning Ray Milland). He’s generally handsome looking and charming with a sort of everyman way about him, but we quickly learn that he’s also the type of guy to hide a bottle of whiskey outside his high-rise apartment’s window by suspending it on a thin rope. This act immediately tells us a lot about Don and his addiction. It’s something he is rather ashamed of and quick to hide, or at least attempt to. This proves to be the case when his more successful younger brother Wick, whom he lives with, discovers the bottle and rather dramatically dumps out its contents. Soon after this, we begin to learn that Don is a very socially known alcoholic. Not only do his aforementioned brother and Don’s girlfriend, Helen, know full well about his disease but seemingly everyone in the neighborhood does as well. Shortly following the opening, there’s a brief scene where Don walks to a drug store and greets a pair of old women. After he passes, one turns to the other and says, “That’s the nice young man that drinks.” This film won’t just deal with the personal effects of alcoholism, it will delve into the social effects as well: how one person’s addiction, illness, and disease will affect a larger community and how they collectively perceive one individual.
Those perceptions and how thoroughly they’re handled end up making for one of the most intriguing and impressive aspects of the film. The middle act of the film consists almost entirely of flashbacks. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the film as it gives us the most insight into Don as a character, how he became the way he is, and how his relationships with the two most important people in his life (Wick and Helen) shifted and morphed over time. Helen, who seems somewhat unwavering yet obviously weary in the “contemporary” section of the film, appears to Don out of the blue. He falls in love so immediately that he forgets to drink for weeks. Even after she discovers his addiction, she is quick to want to help him dissuade his addiction, rather than reprimand him for it. Even more interesting is the look back at his relationship with Wick, a character who is completely fed up and finished with Don’s proclivities. Wick appears sympathetic and even helpful in flashbacks. One particularly brilliant scene shows Helen (so far unaware of Don’s alcoholism) discover a bottle of whiskey beneath his bed. After unsuccessfully attempting to kick the bottle away, Wick proclaims that the bottle is his and that he is the one with the drinking problem. This scenario concerning this character would be unheard of a few years down the line, but here, it exceptionally illustrates how the ties that bind can begin to wither over the years when someone goes without changing their negative ways. Even in those later scenes, however, you can’t help but notice the still fragile hope in the eyes of Helen and Wick—hope for their loved one to return to himself, a hope they share with every audience member.
Unlike most Hollywood productions surrounding the release of this film, which primarily treated alcoholics as either comic relief or pathetic noncharacters, The Lost Weekend treats its central character with great humanity. It never allows him to fall completely into the abyss of villainy. As Don loses more and more control over his addiction and the despair it brings, he does commit a few unfortunate, perhaps sad actions such as attempt to steal money out of a woman’s purse to pay a bar bill, and, less morally out of line and more emotionally, cowers out of meeting his girlfriend’s parents because they’re “too nice of people.” Yet, throughout both of these scenes, Milland portrays such a palpable feeling of guilt on his face that you can’t help but feel sorry for the guy and hope for nothing more than Don to find his way on the wagon. There’s no moment where Don gets into a drunken brawl or hits his wife—because in real life, it often just isn’t like that. Don isn’t a villainous or reprehensible character throughout the film, but someone who’s maybe got some self esteem issues, some guilt, and some troubles he can’t work his way around. This is a character archetype that I’m sure most people ought to relate to in one way or another—I know I do. Sure, it isn’t a perfect portrayal of all this, especially when the final act gets quite preachy and leans heavier into the melodrama, but the film handles its themes and tone with a lot more dignity than you’d expect. The Lost Weekend is something of a landmark in the way it empathizes, rather than demonizes, people with addiction, and in how it dives into the complexities of alcoholism and its effects on an individual’s world rather than simplifying it into something more one note. It stands alongside its semi-contemporaries like Days of Wine and Roses and even The Man With The Golden Arm—as trailblazers in portraying addicts with sympathy rather than shame.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon