The Lost Weekend dvd movie.|
The Lost Weekend cheap dvd videos, dvd movies for sale |
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List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $10.99 You Save: $3.99 Features • Black & White • Closed-captioned • DVD-Video • Full Screen • NTSC In Theaters : 1945 DVD Release : 06 February, 2001 |
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The Lost Weekend description "I'm not a drinker--I'm a drunk." These words, and the serious message behind them, were still potent enough in 1945 to shock audiences flocking to The Lost Weekend. The speaker is Don Birnam (Ray Milland), a handsome, talented, articulate alcoholic. The writing team of producer Charles Brackett and director Billy Wilder pull no punches in their ... review details |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Good movie, but inseparable from cultural fallout. |
| The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder, 1945)
While there's no denying that The Lost Weekend is a pretty durned fine piece of filmmaking, looking at it sixty years later, it's impossible to divorce the film from its cultural fallout. Screenwriter Charles Brackett, working from Charles Jackson's potboiler of a novel, did his best to bring out every possible melodramatic moment, and he succeeded tremendously. The problem being, of course, the public believe what they see, no matter how exaggerated for melodramatic effect. The Lost Weekend was one of the biggest steps in the diseasing of America (cf. Stanton Peele's book of the same name); that it is not as reviled today as Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will (both similarly excellent films on a technical level) is simply a matter of public perspective. Ray Milland stars as Don Birnam, the very definition of an addict. Here's a guy who's willing to steal from strangers, manipulate those around him, and generally act as hateful as humanly possible to get his hands on more of the demon rum. (Or, in Birnam's case, the demon rye.) His girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) has put up with his alcoholism for years, but is rapidly reaching the end of her rope. His brother Wick (Phillip Terry) has arranged a weekend in the country for them, to get Don to dry out and start working on the novel he's been trying to write for years (The Bottle, a thinly-veiled autobiography about alcoholism). Don wanders off and gets drunk before he can leave with Wick, and the rest of the film chronicles Don's debauchery over the weekend that he's supposed to be in the country, which culminates in him hitting bottom after a quick trip to Bellevue's alcoholic ward. Climactic confrontation, etc., ensues, blah blah blah. What makes the film stand apart from the usual redemption film is the constant, unrelenting subtext that there is no redemption to be found here. Wilder often seems allergic to happy endings; it has been mentioned more than once that the ending of this flick was mandated by the studio, but Wilder found every way he could to subvert it (without getting too spoilery, note Birnam's constant talk throughout the second half of the film about vicious circles, and then compare the last scene of the film to the first). Well, that and the fact that one of America's greatest directors made the movie, with some of the best and brightest stars of the day. Milland acts his role to a fever pitch, working the melodrama with every ounce of talent he's got and only crossing the overacting line a handful of times. Wyman does a lot more overacting, but she pulls it off, in some weird way; she's quite good at playing the harried girlfriend here. Perhaps the best acting in the film comes from the bartender at Don's favorite watering hole, Ned (Howard Da Silva), who acts as Milland's straight man, feeding him all the right lines, as bartenders are wont to do. Any fault to be found with this movie has to be found with audience reaction to it, rather than the film itself, but I find that I can't divorce the two in this case. And to think the temperance League wanted to ban the movie, thinking it would encourage drinking. It has done their job far better than they did. *** |
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