The Lost Weekend 1945

The Film:

I knew very little about this film before I watched it the other day and I'd never had even the slightest inclination to watch it.

I knew of its existence, and that it was about an alcoholic. I knew it was the first post-war winner and one of the first Hollywood movies to tackle a big social issue and still be a big box office success. And I knew who starred in it and who directed it (more about him later) because such information is useful for quizzes and the like.

(Actually, that sounds like quite a lot of knowledge, but it really isn't....)

What I have discovered since is that both the alcohol industry and the Temperance Society were dead set against the film being made and released - one concerned that it would stop people drinking, the other that it would encourage it!

Also, before making this film, Ray Milland was a fairly lightweight matinee idol type actor. He was told that the part would be the death of his career. He wasn't bothered about that but worried about whether he was a good enough actor to pull it off. He took a chance......and won an Oscar!

I wasn't particularly looking forward to watching the film. I was expecting it to be dark, depressing, overwrought and not that interesting. But I'd failed to really register who the Writer/Director was.......!


The Ceremony:

This year's programme

A glitzy post-war ceremony was held at Grauman's on March 7th 1946 and was hosted by James Stewart and - yes, you've guessed it - Bob Hope.

It was a star-studded night of glamour where, as well as that year's awards, the plaster statuettes from the war years were replaced with the usual gold plated ones (so Barry Fitzgerald's Oscar got his head back!)

Performers included Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson, Presenters included Ginger Rogers, Ingrid Bergman and Frank Capra.

(In fact, I need to make a note of the date and location - this could be a good time machine moment for me!)

The glamorous, celebratory nature of the evening made it even more impressive that a film with such dark subject matter took home four of the Big Five


Other Notable Winners That Night:

Joan being gracious from her sick bed.....

I finally get chance to use this Joan Crawford photo again, this time in its proper setting. Twelve years after her fabulous performance in Grand Hotel, she won Best Actress for Mildred Pierce. She's in bed because she apparently had pneumonia and couldn't attend the ceremony. (Rumour has it that she only took to her bed in a sulk because she thought she wouldn't win - either way, it's a good bit of acting!)

The other big four Oscars all went to The Lost Weekend (meaning, among other things, that Hitch lost out yet again!). Tom and Jerry won the Animation award again and, despite the war being over, the Documentary nominees still had a predominantly wartime theme.

A "Special" award was given to a short film called "The House I Live In" which starred Frank Sinatra and was made to counter anti-Semitism after the end of the war. Considering the Best Picture winner a few years later, it would appear that the message was very much needed! Here it is as a great slice of nostalgia - with an unfortunately relevant message for today!:

Best Song:

A lesser known Rogers and Hammerstein song from a lesser known musical, State Fair. It's quite a fun musical and it's all up on Youtube if you look for it, but it isn't really remembered much these days - far more low key and of its time than the other R&H films. There were plenty of musicals out in 1945, but no real stand out songs. And this one (sung by Jeanne Craine) is nice enough:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Well, we definitely shouldn't have been watching The Bells of St Mary's. Lovely as it is, it's pretty much the same as the film that won last year (with the addition of Ingrid Bergman). The other three nominees this year are all classics in slightly different ways - Mildred Pierce, Spellbound and Anchors Aweigh. Of them all, the only one I've not seen is Mildred Pierce (and I should probably fix that at some point). Anchors Aweigh is overly long and ever-so-slightly cheesy and is not a personal favourite of this MGM Musicals fan - but it does have Frankie and Gene and Jerry Mouse, which just about redeems it. I love Spellbound though - classic Hitchcock with a fantastically weird Salvador Dali dream sequence.

With apologies to Hitch (and Dali), having now seen The Lost Weekend, I'm more than happy to give it my vote - as much for what it doesn't do, in comparison to it's much "bigger" rivals as for what it does do.....


Our Verdict:

Don and Nat and a bottle of Rye

I should have realised - a film written and directed by Billy Wilder is going to be a witty, interesting and enjoyable film, whatever the subject matter. It's nowhere near the laugh-a-minute that my favourite Wilder film is (Some Like It Hot) and it's not as intriguing and alluring as Double Indemnity. But this is a very good film indeed!

The subject matter is dark and it is tackled with brutal honesty. But Don Birnam is charming, witty, believable and incredibly likeable - and that's really what makes the difference.

Warm Wet Circles

The combination of the lines he is given to say and the way that Ray Milland delivers them is just brilliant. Don with a few drinks in him is a bit of a monster and he behaves so badly that it would be easy for him to either become unintentionally comical or just totally unsympathetic. But he never does.

The script is great - Don is a writer and therefore an educated man and a clever wordsmith. His exchanges with Nat and Gloria at the bar are never exactly comedic (there's too much darkness to the story for that) but they are witty and engaging and made me smile.

Similarly, the explanation that the Irish Pawnbrokers also shut shop for Yom Kippur in solidarity with their Jewish colleagues brought a wry smile (and a note to self to remember that fact for future use with yr10!) followed by the dawning realisation of Don's plight - for which I felt both sympathy and a bit of pain.

It's behind you!

The "Citizen Kane effect" is very much in evidence in the direction of the film, which really helps in the apartment scenes. The angles used really show Don's panic when he's searching for his hidden whiskey and heighten the tension in several scenes set in the apartment.

The writing and directing is superb (Wilder deserved both those Oscars!). Ray Milland's acting is really quite extraordinary. He's well supported by a cast that literally do just that - support him but let the whole film be about him.

The New York setting is very apt and is used really effectively - and the fact that they shot so much of the film out on location in NYC adds something else to the whole feel of the film.

Helen and that coat - enough reason for redemption?

I was expecting to, at most, "appreciate" this film for the groundbreaking issues-based film that it was. I was also dreading it being a dated, over-acted melodramatic potboiler that left me cold.

I was wrong on all counts. I'm writing this five days later and I'm not just thinking back to what I watched, I'm "feeling" back to it. It's not knocked me sideways or zoomed right up my list of all time greats (like some of the later winners did when I first saw them) but it has definitely stayed with me this week. Some of that is due to Ray Milland - the rest is pure Billy Wilder!

(Oh, and as it turns out, the alcohol industry and the temperance lobby were both sort of right and both sort of wrong. We finished the film at around the time on a Saturday that one of us would usually suggest a gin or a glass of wine, but it didn't feel like the right response at the time. So I had a coffee instead. And then opened a bottle of wine about an hour later.....)