27 Days With Billy Wilder And Me

Billy Wilder’s fifth movie, The Lost Weekend, starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman, was released in 1945. Billy was 39 years old.

The story is about an ersatz writer named Don Birnam (Ray Milland), an alcoholic who goes on a drinking binge and loses a weekend; hence, the title of the movie. The Lost Weekend won four Academy Awards: Best Actor (Milland), Best Director (Billy Wilder), Best Picture, and Best Writing, Screenplay (Wilder and Charles Brackett). The movie deserved every award. The acting is riveting. The writing is whip-smart.

For example, there’s a particular scene that never ceases to amaze me. It’s when Don Birnam is sitting in a bar talking to Nat (Howard Da Silva), the bartender. The ensuing 60 seconds (16:44-17:40) offers some of the most intelligent, finely crafted dialogue to be found anywhere. Feast your eyes on this (Milland is speaking):

It shrinks my liver, doesn’t it? It pickles my kidneys. Yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I’m above the ordinary. I’m competent, supremely competent. I’m walking a tightrope over Niagra Falls. I’m one of the great ones. I’m Michelangelo moulding the beard of Moses. I’m Van Gogh, painting pure sunlight. I’m Horowitz playing the Emperor Concerto. I’m John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I’m Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I’m W. Shakespeare. And out there it’s not Third Avenue any longer. It’s the Nile, Nat, and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra. Come here. “Purple the sales, and so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke…”

This is a dark movie that is, essentially, about a guy’s live unraveling. Who wants to watch something like that? Yet, the movie isn’t maudlin. It doesn’t wallow. It’s gritty, compelling, tremendously watchable. Sort of like a car accident beside the highway. It’s hard to look away.

Principle Cast:
Don Birnam…………………………………Ray Milland (1905–1986)
Helen St. James…………………………….Jane Wyman (1917–2007)
Wick Birnam…………………………………Phillip Terry (1909–1993)
Nat …………………………………………….Howard Da Silva (1909–1986)
Gloria………………………………………….Doris Dowling (1923–2004)

There’s not really much else to say about The Lost Weekend. It’s a cautionary tale for anyone who even thinks about taking a drink instead of mustering the courage to face life. If you don’t want to become Don Birnam, watch The Lost Weekend. (The scene in which he awakens in a sanitarium, alone, is enough to give me the willies.)

Too, watch it — every frame of it — if you aspire to become a great screenwriter. This is the stuff of which legends are made.