Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. The Lost Weekend is the eighteenth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. Writers block can strike anyone who tries to put pen to paper. Sometimes even writing a review of a Best Picture film from the 1940s can feel like Sponegbob relentlessly scribbling to only come up with a single word. How we push through with that defines us as writers, the name earned by actually translating thought into written word. In The Lost Weekend, Don Birnam (Ray Milland) tries to use alcohol to facilitate his storytelling. He calls himself a writer, but as bottles of rye empty to match the content of his blank pages, it becomes clear that Don is really just a drunk, not a writer. It is not as if Don is an ineffectual storyteller. Few alcoholics will wax poetic on their condition the way that Don Birnam does. As he puts back shot after shot of rye at Nat’s (Howard da Silva) bar, words and ideas begin to flow as freely as the liquor. Don tells of his whirlwind romance with Helen (Jane Wyman) and how her love very nearly saved him from the bottom of the bottle. Alas the other Don, as Birnam calls his lesser angels, could not be quieted for long. Heading into this particular weekend Don had been sober for 10 days as he prepared for a weekend getaway to the countryside with his brother Wick (Phillip Terry.) This is not the first dry streak Don has scrabbled together only to collapse into a devastating bender. The patience of Wick and Helen is running thin. Naturally, Don escapes their watchful eyes and dives right back into his old ways. This binge is different though, sending Don on an odyssey across New York and threatening life as he knows it. Billy Wilder’s insidious portrait of alcoholism is well crafted but lacking a sharpness. Known more for his ventures in noir and comedy, Wilder approaches The Lost Weekend with an exaggerated flair that doesn’t always do justice to the sensitivities of Don’s condition. Milland’s performance exacerbates these issues too. His drunken soliloquies often read more as manic than inebriated. Still, the dramatization is often quite intense. Much of this comes from shot composition, lighting and music. Wilder designs his shots brilliantly, often framing Don beneath or in the reflection of a liquor bottle. Miklós Rózsa’s score similarly constricts around Don in tandem with the tightening grip of the alcohol. Through sheer force of filmmaking The Lost Weekend is able to make Don’s plight feel inescapable. Wilder’s first Best Picture winner is not his best film by any stretch, it is an intense look into an alcoholic’s spiral to rock bottom. Although uneven, the film does provide a good showcase for Wilder’s strengths as a director. The same flare he shows here will help him win another best picture over a decade later. While The Lost Weekend struggles to capture addiction realistically, it does understand the emotionality of the condition for both Don and the people around him. 8/10
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