Google Ads
Login | Sign Up

The Lost Weekend Overview:

The Lost Weekend (1945) was a Drama - Film Adaptation Film directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Charles Brackett.

The film was based on the novel of the same name written by Charles R. Jackson published in 1944.

SYNOPSIS

This portrait of alcohol's deadly grip is perhaps the greatest of the social-problem films, and a rewarding, harrowing movie experience. Milland gives the performance of a lifetime as a writer who encounters the depths of his soul on a weekend alone in New York. When his brother (Terry) goes on vacation, leaving Milland alone to write, the bottles come out before the typewriter. Before the weekend is over, Milland will have lost his money, his freedom, and his grip on reality as he descends into the alcoholic abyss. Justly praised upon its first, limited release, the movie was almost scrapped when the alcoholic beverage industry is offered millions for the negative, and studio executives questioned its commercial potential. Milland explored the darkest corners of society researching the role, spending the night in New York's Bellevue Hospital (the setting for some of the most disturbing sequences) on the alcoholic ward. Based on Charles Jackson's 1944 novel.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).

The Lost Weekend was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2011.

Academy Awards 1945 --- Ceremony Number 18 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best ActorRay MillandWon
Best CinematographyJohn F. SeitzNominated
Best DirectorBilly WilderWon
Best Film EditingDoane HarrisonNominated
Best Music - ScoringMiklos RozsaNominated
Best PictureParamountWon
Best WritingCharles Brackett, Billy WilderWon
See More Oscar Winners

The Lost Weekend BlogHub Articles:

The Lost Weekend (1945) and Alcohol The Femme Fatale

By 4 Star Film Fan on Feb 10, 2021 From 4 Star Films

It might be a futile exercise but at least for a brief moment, I will attempt to get back into the headspace from when I first came upon Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend. I was younger then. Bright-eyed and a budding cinephile. It is the film that defined Ray Milland’s entire filmography ... Read full article

Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend (1945)

By Carol Martinheira on Mar 1, 2018 From The Old Hollywood Garden

Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend (1945) On March 1, 2018March 1, 2018 By CarolIn Uncategorized Because it’s Oscar season, I wanted to talk about one of my all-time favorite performances in the Best Actor in a Leading Role category, the wonderful Ray Milland in The Los... Read full article

The Lost Weekend (1945)

By Cameron on Apr 10, 2015 From The Blonde At The Film

via: http://screeninsight.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-lost-weekend-billy-wilder-1945.html  Unless otherwise noted, all images are my own. In 1945, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called The Lost Weekend a “shatteringly realistic and morbidly fascinating film…an illustration of ... Read full article

The Lost Weekend (1945)

By Cameron on Apr 10, 2015 From The Blonde At The Film

via: http://screeninsight.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-lost-weekend-billy-wilder-1945.html  Unless otherwise noted, all images are my own. In 1945, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called The Lost Weekend a “shatteringly realistic and morbidly fascinating film…an illustration of ... Read full article

The Lost Weekend

By Michael on Jan 20, 2014 From Le Mot du Cinephiliaque

The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder, 1945) The film recounts the life of an alcoholic New York writer, Don Birnam (Ray Milland), over the last half of a six-year period, and in particular on a weekend alcoholic binge. Preparing for a weekend away, Don and his brother Wick (Philip Terry), Don can&#82... Read full article

See More The Lost Weekend Articles

The Lost Weekend Quotes:

Don Birnam: It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yeah. But what it does to the mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michaelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer, it's the Nile. Nat, it's the Nile and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra.
Don Birnam: Let me have one, Nat. I'm dying. Just one.
Don Birnam: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can't take quiet desperation!
Don Birnam: I'm not a drinker;I'm a drunk.
Wick Birnem: If it happens, it happens and I hope it does. I've had six years of this. I've had my bellyfull... Who are we fooling? We've tried everything, haven't we? We've reasoned with him. We've baited him. We've watched him like a hawk. We've tried trusting him. How often have you cried? How often have I beaten him up? Scrape him out of a gutter and pump some kind of self-respect into him and back he falls, back in every time.
Helen St. James: He's a sick person. It's as though there was something wrong with his heart or his lungs. You wouldn't walk out on him if he had an attack. He needs our help.
Wick Birnem: He won't accept our help. Not Don, he hates us. He wants to be alone with that bottle of his. It's all he gives a hang about. Why kid ourselves? He's a hopeless alcoholic.
See More Quotes from The Lost Weekend
The Lost Weekend Facts
The outdoor filming was done in New York City and the interiors were done in Hollywood. The latter included an exact duplicate of a Third Avenue bar, P.J. Clarke's, on Stage 5 at Paramount Pictures, complete down to the dusty stuffed cat on the top of the payphone. Ray Milland, who starred in the film, tells that for one week every afternoon at five o'clock the door of the set would open, a man would walk up to the bar (whether filming was going on or not), order a straight bourbon, chat about the weather, plunk down fifty cents, and stroll out. It was the writer Robert Benchley, who was homesick for New York.
Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 25 Most Dangerous Movies".
On March 10, 1946 -- three days after winning the Academy Award -- Ray Milland appeared as a guest on a radio broadcast of "The Jack Benny Show." In a spoof of _The Lost Weekend (1945)_ (QV), Ray and Jack Benny played alcoholic twin brothers. Phil Harris -- who normally played Jack Benny's hard-drinking bandleader on the show -- played the brother who tried to convince Ray and Jack to give up liquor. ("Ladies and gentlemen," said an announcer, "the opinions expressed by Mr. Harris are written in the script and are not necessarily his own.") In the alcoholic ward scene, smart-aleck Frank Nelson played the ward attendant who promised Ray and Jack that they would soon start seeing DT visions of strange animals. When the DT visions appeared (with Mel Blanc providing pig squeals, monkey chatters, and other animal sound effects), Ray chased them off. "Ray, they're gone!" Benny shouted. "What did you do?" Milland replied, "I threw my Oscar at them!"
To prepare for the part, Ray Milland spent one night in Bellevue Hospital as a patient. He also stopped eating as much, as most alcoholics forget to do so.
Don quotes twice from William Shakespeare when he is in Nat's bar. The first quote "Purple the sails, and so perfumed ... " is from Antony and Cleopatra: Act II, Scene 2. The second "Yea, all which it shall inherit ..." is from The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1.
See More Facts about The Lost Weekend >>