The Lost Weekend Details

Billy Wilder's ground-breaking drama about an alcoholic writer trying to kick the bottle, won Oscars for best film, direction, screenplay and actor, Ray Milland. Don Birnam (Milland) is the booze-afflicted antihero, suffering from writer's block and a frighteningly convincing case of the DTs. Despite the grim subject matter, there are glimpses of Wilder's characteristic mordant wit — the (hidden) bottle dangling out of the apartment window and Birnam's desperate mission to pawn his typewriter on a Jewish holiday — and the director's location work in New York's Third Avenue district is exemplary. Casting the hitherto bland Milland was a stroke of genius, but the scenes involving Birnam's brother (Phillip Terry) and girlfriend (Jane Wyman) are soft-centred and don't really work, making this literally a message that comes in a bottle.

Startlingly original on its release, this stark little drama keeps its power, especially in the scenes on New York streets and in a dipso ward. It could scarcely have been more effectively filmed.