Picture 18: The Lost Weekend (1945)

One of only three films in history to win both Best Picture in Hollywood and at Cannes, one is justified to have high expectations but can it meet them? Can Paramount’s The Lost Weekend rank highly in an already very competitive field?

We follow thirtysomething New York writer Don Birman (Ray Milland) as he prepares to go away for the weekend with his brother Wick. However, Don is a relapsing alcoholic and he loses the weekend to a binge. We can only watch on as his alcohol dependence ruins his life. His career, finances and relationships are all decimated by his crippling cravings. His life spirals out of control to a harrowing extent as his physical and mental health are tortured by alcohol. The screenplay toys cleverly with our desire for a silver lining and one finds themselves spending the hour and forty minutes wondering if this can ever be possible.

Gritty, realistic and gripping, there are precious few better depictions of addiction on the silver screen.

Rating:

9/10

Reflections:

1. When it gets going – alcohol destroys lives.

2. As the poem Desiderata says “in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, love is as perennial as the grass”.

Oscar Best Picture Rankings:

1. Casablanca (1943)

2. Rebecca (1940)

3. Lost Weekend (1945)

4. How Green Was My Valley (1941)

5. Gone With the Wind (1939)

6. Mrs. Miniver (1942)

7. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

8. Wings (1928)

9. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

10. You can’t take it with you (1938)

11. Cimarron (1931)

12. Grand Hotel (1932)

13. It Happened One Night (1934)

14. Cavalcade (1933)

15. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

16. Going My Way (1944)

17. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

18. The Broadway Melody (1929)