It is perhaps hard to imagine today how edgy and depressing a movie like “The Lost Weekend” was in 1945. Ray Milland portrayed Don Birnam in an Oscar winning role that gave us the movie’s first drunk. Milland and Director Billy Wilder not only led this tough, gritty and realistic film to box office success but also to a Best Picture award.
“The Lost Weekend” was the first film to tackle alcoholism head-on, and it was a bold move for an audience that until then had wanted little more than to be entertained. Birnam is set to go on a detox weekend with his brother until he convinces his brother and girlfriend to delay the trip by a few hours. In that time, he scours his apartment for hidden booze and money so that he can get sloppy wasted. And after leaving more than a dozen “vicious circles” on a bar, he misses his train and is abandoned by his brother, his bartender and soon his girl. I imagined this would become a movie in which we watched a man go from bad to worse to rock bottom, but that comes later. The screenplay by Wilder and Charles Brackett actually devotes about a third of the film to developing Birnam as a writer, as a lover and as an amateur barfly. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Lost Weekend”