The Lost Weekend 1945

     Don Birnam has been an alcoholic for a LONG time!!  He has been on the wagon for ten days and seems to be doing better?  What has really happened is that his cravings have become more demanding.  He evades a country weekend planned by his brother Wick.  Helen is his girlfriend and she’s been trying to help him with the bottle too.  He hides from Helen so he can go on a four-day bender.  There are flashbacks of everything that’s gone wrong in his life because of rye whiskey!!  Don is sinking to the bottom and this may be his last bender one way or another?

     I was very GLAD that I was not Don Birnam.  He’s tied to the bottle and he can’t escape from wanting it!!  He’ll do anything and tell anybody anything to get booze.  His brother and his girlfriend are wasting their time trying to get him to stop drinking.  They believe in him and what he says?  But, he hasn’t reached the bottom yet so he won’t do what he needs to do!!  There is a LOT of tension and a terrible atmosphere of fear and almost insanity!!  3 1/2* (I liked this movie)

  

101 min, directed by Billy Wilder with Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen, Mary Young, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Lilian Fontaine, Frank Orth, Lewis L. Russell. 

Note:  Imdb 8 out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 100% critic 90% audience, EmpireOnline 5* Kim Newman, ReelViews.net 3* James Berardinelli, Amazon 4.4* out of 5* with 195 reviews.  Goodreads gives the novel 4.04* out of 5* with 1326 ratings.

Special Note:  Filmed in New York City, Manhattan and Los Angeles, California.  Billy Wilder claimed that the liquor industry offered Paramount $5 million to not release this film.  Wilder said he would have accepted if he had received the offer!!  In later years, Wilder discovered that the title was supposed to be The Last Weekend from Charles R. Jackson’s novel?  An instrument called a theremin is used to produce the wavering and somewhat high-pitched tones included in the music.  Ray Milland checked himself into Bellevue Hospital in order to experience the drunken ward first hand.  Because there was so much commotion, Milland escaped while a door was ajar and slipped out onto 34^th Street.  A policeman didn’t believe him when he saw the Bellevue insignia on his robe.  He was dragged back and it took him 30 minutes to explain!!  Ray Milland won an Oscar for his performance.