The Lost Weekend (1945) Paramount Pictures Director: Billy Wilder Producer: Charles Brackett Cast: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen. Awards ceremony: -18th Academy Awards: March 7, 1946. Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, California. Other films nominated for Best Motion Picture this year: -Anchors Aweigh. -The Bells Of St. Mary's. -Mildred Pierce. -Spellbound. Plot summary: Don Birnam (RAY MILLAND) is a writer living in his brother's apartment in New York City. Together they are meant to be going away to the country for the weekend so that Don can start work on writing a novel called 'The Bottle', but he ends up staying behind on account of being dependent on alcohol. Over the next few days Don becomes more and more focused on feeding his addiction and resorting to theft of his brother's rent money to begging bar owners to let him have a drink. He recalls to a barman the story of how he and his girlfriend Helen (JANE WYMAN) met three years previously through a mix up of coats at an auditorium and how it brings us up to the present situation where Don sinks to rock bottom and with no way out of his personal hell contemplates suicide. At the final moment Helen is able to rescue him and it looks as though Don could be on the slow road to recovery. Standout scene: The scene in the dark apartment with Ray Milland seeing the mouse in the hole in the wall and the bat flying around was really well shot and would have been my stand out scene had it not been for the sequence in the bar where he cannot pay his bill and tries to steal the lady's purse. There's also a fantastic shot in the apartment where Milland is trying to remember where he hid a bottle of liquor and the camera angle shows him in the shot as it looks from the ground up at the light above where he had forgotten he had put it. Genius example of how brilliant Billy Wilder was as a director. I'm so glad he won the Oscar for this film. Facts: -The 18th Academy Awards. -Nominated for 7 Academy Awards, it won 4: Best Film, Best Director (Billy Wilder), Best Actor (Ray Milland), Best Screenplay. -The opening shot is reversed for the final shot as we look across the New York skyline to - and then from Don's apartment window. Clever. -Regular Hal Roach stars appear in the film, including (click link for screenshot): Frank Faylen. Personal opinion: The first 10 minutes of a film for me is usually an indicator of what lies ahead in terms of holding my attention and sustaining my interest. This film did not disappoint. First things first: Ray Milland is absolutely incredible and gives the performance of a lifetime as an alcoholic writer spiraling out of control and resorting to desperate measures to feed his drink addiction. The disheveled looks as the film progresses, the screams of fear when he encounters the night visions in his apartment, the complete and utter devastation of his character as he steadily sinks lower and lower until the brink of suicide, capped off by some absolutely beautiful cinematography and art direction which encapsulates the light and dark shadows of the sets. And then we have Billy Wilder at the helm. His direction is spot-on and totally deserved the Oscar for his contribution to what is without doubt one of the best movies I have seen in a long while. Some excellent visuals, in particular when Don is drinking heavily at the bar and we see the wet rings of all the glasses he has consumed, and the sequence with him trying to pawn the typewriter and walking through the streets. The closed shutters in the shop doorways preventing Don from purchasing any alcohol as we see him desperately looking in from behind the bars is just masterpiece framing. This is simply a must-see movie. Did it deserve the Oscar? YES. Absolutely YES. 8/10

Review date: 19 February 2025