The Lost Weekend (1945)

Editor's note: The Lost Weekend. A film noir. Before you go shooting me off an angry email about what “film noir is” a bit of history. In summer 1946, with the war ended and American films once again appearing on Paris movie screens, several French critics became immediately attracted to certain dark movies with arresting visuals and a focus on psychology. French writers figured out what to call them. Nino Frank, writing for a French film journal, dubbed the movies film noir. The term was deliberately analogous to roman noir used to describe American “hard boiled” fiction. (Série noire was the title of a popular series of “hard-boiled” books first put out in '45. The most popular were translations of English and American crime novels including James M. Cain's Double Indemnity and W. R. Burnett's Little Caesar) The five films mentioned in Frank's August 1946 article about “film noir” were The Maltese Falcon; Double Indemnity; Laura; Murder, My Sweet; and The Lost Weekend. Citizen Kane was also listed but was rightly put in a category by itself. American film noir was an immediate hit amongst film critics and movie goers in France. It would be years before the term was used in America.

The Lost Weekend today isn't categorized as a noir by most but I think it probably should be. The film fits nicely between Wilder's Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd. Film historian Bill Hare writes this week's Film Noir of the Week.

By William Hare

Milland Chilling, Wilder Devastating

After a director turns in a film noir effort for the ages with the 1944 blockbuster Double Indemnity can one expect another chiller the following year?

If Billy Wilder is the extraordinary director then the answer is yes. As a matter of fact, in Hollywood recognition terms, The Lost Weekend netted the Austrian émigré director those elusive Academy Awards that Double Indemnity deserved but were not received.

The Lost Weekend swept the major category Oscars. Wilder himself secured two, one for “Best Director” and “Best Screenplay” honors along with his regular writing partner of that period, Charles Brackett.

The film also secured “Best Picture” honors while the film’s star, Ray Milland, took “Best Actor” honors for a chilling portrayal of an alcoholic whose ruthless preoccupation for consumption threatens not only to overwhelm him, but the two people who care for him most, loyal girlfriend Jane Wyman and Milland’s brother, played by Phillip Terry, who was at the time the real life husband of Joan Crawford.

Chillingly Believable Portrayal

Milland’s portrayal is chillingly believable in that he covers two spectrums closely identified with alcoholics, cunning imagination along with deeply rooted desperation to do anything it takes to sustain a habit that uncorrected leads to human destruction.

Viewers see Milland’s cunning imagination in the film’s opening scene. The camera’s eye of cinematographer John F. Seitz informs viewers, however, of Milland’s imagination at work. We see out of the open window of Milland’s Upper East Side apartment a rope that he has installed. Attached to it is, what else, a bottle of whiskey.

Accustomed to playing attentive detective to his brother, Terry snuffs out the plot and pours the contents of the liquor into the kitchen sink. His act is not enough to sink Milland’s resourcefulness.

Imagination gives way to ultimate desperation as Milland figures out a way to prevent the intended healthy weekend in the country with his brother replete with drinking well fresh water and buttermilk as substitutes for his raging quest for rye whiskey.

When he learns that girlfriend Wyman has tickets for a Carnegie Hall concert he uses his wiles to get her along with Terry out of his apartment, suggesting that they attend the concert together. He might be without funds to buy whiskey, but this is only a temporary situation.

Fate intervenes on Milland’s side when his cleaning lady arrives. She asks for the money that Terry has promised. It is there, but Milland lies to her that his brother apparently forgot to put it there, and that the situation will be remedied and she will be paid on Monday.

Off on a Lost Weekend

Milland departs from his apartment in a flash, albeit a thirsty one. The resulting “lost weekend” provides the title of the film, which was adapted from a bestselling novel written by Charles Jackson.

Why was such a sophisticated and elegant young woman as Jane Wyman attracted to Cornell University dropout and failed fiction writer Milland, whose instability and craving for alcohol make him a horrible long term prospect? For one thing her female nurturing instinct makes her believe that Milland is not a lost cause, and that ultimately she can help save him from his destructive side.

The second reason for Wyman’s love for Milland is that he is such a dapper, witty man. It is observable that after a few drinks he can be charmingly engaging as he discusses Shakespeare and philosophizes.

Prominent character actor Howard Da Silva provides a solid effort in his role as the bartender at the local watering hole that Milland frequents. Da Silva is open in his apprehension of a man who, while a regular customer, is so evocative of what can happen to a patron with too great a fondness for the establishment’s product.

“One’s too many and a thousand’s not enough,” Da Silva reveals with succinct sadness, summarizing Milland’s condition along with his refusal to drink with him.

Doris Dowling is memorable in a feature role as a dazzling but down on her luck prostitute who uses Da Silva’s bar as a meeting venue for salesman types “visiting from Albany.” She hopes to change her luck and Milland’s through romance, an effort destined to fail given his love for Jane Wyman.

At one point during Milland’s lost weekend, as he grows increasingly desperate for a drink and finds a succession of Upper East Side bars and liquor stores closed, he stops a man and asks him what has happened. The man explains that it is the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. When Milland asks about Irish establishments he is told that a reciprocal agreement exists whereby Jewish businesses honor St. Patrick’s Day by closing down while the opposite holds true for Yom Kippur.

Haunting Preview of Milland’s Future?

Any such journey into the belly of hell as Milland has undertaken is destined to end in some form of calamity. His desperation almost lands him in jail at a nightclub, where he steals a woman’s purse and removes ten dollars. The decision is to physically remove him from the establishment rather than summon police.

From that point Milland plunges into even darker depths. He wakes up on a bed in an unfamiliar room inhabited by men who share his torment. The scene is the alcohol ward of Bellevue Hospital.

An expression of tormented fear grips Milland as he observes a trembling African American man in the bed next to his. Soon another man cries out and convulses under the influence of delirium tremens.

Character actor Frank Faylen, whose career accelerated after a brief but unforgettable interlude in the film, surfaces in Milland’s world as the ward’s nurse. Faylen makes a deep impression with his well-reasoned cynicism and foreboding prediction, rendered with confidence, that Milland is someone he will see again. The nurse points out to Milland other establishment regulars, increasing his fearful desperation.

Some of Milland’s most penetrating acting comes not from the way he delivers his words, as brilliantly rendered as they are, but from his expressions. He runs the gamut from a briefly on the top of the world delusional happiness achieved while in the high state preceding drunkenness to fearful desperation, particularly evidenced when cynical nurse Frank Faylen coolly explains the future that awaits him.


Compelling Musical Score

If viewers of The Lost Weekend detect similarity between the chilling orchestral sounds of Milland at his most desperate and those achieved during Gregory Peck’s amnesiac fearful uncertainty in another classic film released in 1945, Hitchcock’s Spellbound, it is understandable.

Hungarian born Miklós Rózsa wrote both scores. Rózsa was nominated for an Oscar for his The Lost Weekend score but did not win, achieving the statuette instead for Spellbound. It was a great year for Rózsa since he achieved a threesome with yet another nomination for Song to Remember.

Throughout this pulsating noir classic a relentless tug of war plays out with skillful dramatic clarity, that of Milland’s compelling urgency toward alcoholism contrasted with an equally determined conviction on the part of Jane Wyman to save him from self-destruction.

Just as he did one year earlier with Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder has led us on another spellbinding journey in The Lost Weekend where the forces of all-consuming destruction seek satisfying triumph.