The Lost Weekend (Lost #1 of 5)

Genre: Social Statement

Premise: The tale is a dark, painful glimpse into the five days of the life of Don, an alcoholic and failed writer. After having been kept sober for 10 days, Don manages to evade them and embark on the hunt for something to drink.

Writer: Novel by Charles Jackson (a binge drinker with no other big works), Script by Billy Wilder (The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity) and Charles Brackett (Niagra, Sunset Boulevard, The Bishop's Wife)

About: One of four novels Wilder took with him on a cross country train ride, he stayed up all night reading the book and taking notes. Upon arrival, Wilder called Paramount's studio head and asked him to buy the rights. The book was acquired for $50,000.

Essentially, this film is the grand daddy of social statement films. At the time, with the exception of pieces like Griffith's Intolerane, alcohol hadn't been discussed much. Obviously Blake Edward's Days of Wine and Roses would follow soon after, followed of course by pieces much later like Leaving Las Vegas. I had a response to this script quite simlar to how I feel about Wilder's Some Like It Hot or Double Indemnity. While it's almost indisputable that Wilder has hung up his story on a beautifully constructed framework, the script lacks fluidity and the slowly paced scenes seem overcalculated, with each colorful charater and tense vignette standing out too sharply, everything is nailed down to a meaning for us. Ultimately the whole thing is short on imaginative resonance. But understandably, in basically inventing this type of social statement film, it'd only follow through that Wilder becomes a bit too formulaic.

The funny thing is the film's predictability only becomes noticeable because the work slides off at times into a world of improvised bliss. I really can't recall seeing a 1940's film with such creative spark as the monologue moments Don has at the bar. Now of course, there's The Best Years of Our Lives but what that film does structurally (an Altman precursor if there ever was one), The Lost Weekend does with dialogue. So when the film reverts back to attempting an overall statement there are times when it slips and the dialogue isn't as deliciously worded.

There's also some problems with Don's decision to quit drinking. I'm not certain this Lost Weekend of his is so much worse than of the others (I know he wakes up in a hospital after his binge, but still). In a way, I fear the writers were trying to apply a slightly undeveloped approach to Don's deision to give up the bottle and resultantly the effort comes off as maudlin and overly sentimental. (O'Brien's Leaving Las Vegas takes a much more honest approach to the same source material, but as we'll see, that films veers at time into failing as too honest a depition of what the life of an alcoholic is like).

Look. Let's call a spade a spade. While outdated, The Lost Weekend is monumental. The film received many Academy Awards, but much more importantly without this script by Brackett and Wilder there'd be no A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Days of Wine and Roses, Barfly, Clean and Sober, When A Man Loves A Woman, or Leaving Las Vegas.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
[X] Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)

Isla Roles: If they ever do a remake, Isla could play the main love interest very well. She's funny, sarcastic, but generally just a sweet girl. (There's also a direct relationship between the love interest in Lost Weekend and Sera in Leaving Las Vegas, which makes one wonder just how much John O'Brien was inspired ultimately by this film).

Tip: Monologues can be used to great effect if they have a reason and a point. This film gives its protagonist some of the best film monologues I ever read about the perils of drinking, and they work because he's a meandering drunk who is whining on his bar stool and that's exactly what barstool drunks do.