1945's THE LOST WEEKEND

No.

It's ok. The book is much better. They changed the ending for the movie.

A favorite. And it hits too close to home for me.

Isn't this just like a pre-AA movie?

The 50 Load Lost Weekend is better.

It's a chance to see Joan's husband Phillip Terry. We were told he was a minor actor but I think he's good in the film.

Half-assed thread. Why come here if you didn’t bother to watch the entire film —how lazy are you?

It is a classic, and Ray Milland earned his Oscar. I’m a bit biased because I’d pay to watch Jane Wyman read the phone book. It’s sad, worth a watch, but so drastically of its time that it’s a little unrelatable nowadays.

Watch “Come Back, Little Sheba”. Does the same thing but 100 times better. Shirley Booth was lightening in a bottle, one of my favorite Best Actress winners. She had that quality where you’d think some dowdy depressed housewife wandered onto the soundstage and started living a day in her life while cameras happened to be rolling. Plus Richard Jaeckel was sex on a stick.

AA was the miracle cure at the time. All the big “alcoholic pictures” were pretty heavy handed about it.

I never had an interest in it or Days of Wine and Roses. Too bleak.

I’m not fond of “The Lost Weekend,” though it was well thought of at the time, was considered adult and hard-hitting.

And you might be interested to know that the author of the book was a closet case, and there are hints in the novel that the protagonist’s chronic alcoholism was a way of dealing with this shame, guilt and anxiety. I suspect that a lot of alcoholism in pre-Stonewall days involved self-medicating to ease self hatred about one’s attraction to men. Of course drinking also lowered inhibitions enough to enable sexual activity between men. Which just fed a vicious cycle.

Let Miss Lawson show ya how it's done...

+1 to I’ll Cry Tomorrow.

See also “I Could Go On Singing” starring (seemingly not DL fave?) Judy Garland.

The Days of Wine and Roses. EEK. Great movie, great writing, great acting especially but I'll never watch it again. Bleak is right. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick just punch you in the fucking face with their acting.

I cannot tolerate the theory drunks and addicts are closet cases, it really angers me.

There are no flaming queens who are drunks and drug addicted?

[quote] There are no flaming queens who are drunks and drug addicted?

It’s a paradox. Sometimes the loudest are the most self-loathing.

[quote]I cannot tolerate the theory drunks and addicts are closet cases, it really angers me.

It's not that R10 is saying drunks are closet cases but that closet cases can be drunks.

I think it’s a fantastic film. I can’t even imagine getting halfway through it and being bored at that point.

The mother of Olivia d Havilland and Joan Fontaine plays Jane Wyman’s mother.

There a god book about the letters of Charles Brackett that has all kinds of interesting things about Brackett and Wilder. I think they offered the Wyman role to Fontaine, maybe that’s why her mother was cast (?). Their first choice was Katharine Hepburn.

*good book

R7 Lighten up! OP is just asking for opinions because he knows it's a classic but he's not getting into it.

If you find the movie bleak, don't even think about reading the book.

Too much...

It was the 1st Hollywood film that addressed alcoholism head on, so I think that's mostly why people give it so much credit. Its not bad, but it's not particularly great either

No OP it's turgid. I could never get through it. The director Billy Wilder has done many classics such as Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Witness for the Prosecution and Some Like It Hot which are worth watching.

*

DOW&R is super depressing but I commend them for keeping the film bleak in early 60s Hollywood.

Didn’t A Star Is Born (1937) address alcoholism head-on?

I think like most Wilder (or Wilder-Brackett) films, it tells the story with very good writing, cleverness, and sharpness. The opening shot, for example, with the bottle hanging outside the apartment window. The shabbiness of the apartment shared by the brothers, with Milland sleeping in a day bed. It immediately hints that the brother has to support both of them. he way the brother and girlfriend keep talking about drinking water and buttermilk on the proposed trip to the country. Then in the flashback how seeing Traviata makes Don need a drink. So clever.

R 14: I did not say all all drunks and addicts are clost cases. I said that pre-Stonewall (a crucial qualifier you seem not to have read) a lot of self-hating gay guys drank a lot to a) lower inhibitions enough to have sex and b) to numb and forget feelings of self-loathing. The author of “The Lost Weekend” knew that well.

And of course people in general drank a lot then, which was a slippery slope for addictive personalities.

The reason I wanted to watch this was because I really enjoy some of the other Wilder films - and this has 'classic' status. But I just can't get into it, and after reading the responses I think I'll pass on the second half.

Thanks everyone.

Perhaps, r29/OP, Palm Springs Weekend would be more to your liking.

I loved the film. I saw it first during COVID.

An old gay man I used to know told me about seeing this when it came out, and afterwards saying to his friend, “God, I need a drink.”

The second half is the part where he thinks he sees the bat killing the mouse, on the wall, with the blood pouring down, and ends up in the ward at Bellvue, with the gay male nurse, right? I like the 2nd half.

All that Miklos Rozsa theramin music.

Shoutout to P. J. Clarke's the real-life inspiration for the bar in the movie.

[quote] Isn't this just like a pre-AA movie?

A pre-what?!

...again

I want a lost weekend...at the Waldorf!

R36 Alcoholics Anonymous obviously

R8 Except The Lost Weekend.

[Quote] Watch “Come Back, Little Sheba”. Does the same thing but 100 times better. Shirley Booth was lightening in a bottle, one of my favorite Best Actress winners. She had that quality where you’d think some dowdy depressed housewife wandered onto the soundstage and started living a day in her life while cameras happened to be rolling. Plus Richard Jaeckel was sex on a stick.

Shirley Booth's Lola would drive anyone to drink!

" Shirley booth is the essence of all those dreamy, slatternly, gabby, sentimental women who move one to pity by their harmlessness and to disgust by their vacuity"-Pauline Kael

My dad was convinced Richard Jaeckel was gay.

Was your father gay R42? Did his dick taste like shit?

Jaeckel was...short.

When I'm drunk...

OP did you get to the scene in the club where Ray Milland steals a woman's purse?

R8, here are Richard Jaekel’s LEGS on the set of Sheba for you.

It's some good filmmaking, but flawed and has an aesthetic that could be really annoying for some people. Think it's worth finishing to hold it up against other films, like many posters here have done.

Can't...help...

Come on, Oscar!

R46 Yes, I did. Don't get me wrong - it's very well acted and well produced. I just find it a little too boring for my taste.

I think it was clever how he kept a bottle of whiskey hanging from a string out his apartment window.

Margaret Elliott in The Star wasn’t an alcoholic, she just went on a binge.

Is it as good as Lost Horizon?

[quote]" Shirley booth is the essence of all those dreamy, slatternly, gabby, sentimental women who move one to pity by their harmlessness and to disgust by their vacuity"

Also a perfect description of Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun.

Shelley was great. It doesn’t sound like a compliment, but she really made you want her character to be murdered.

R35

Isn’t that the bar where the preppy murder kids hung out?

[quote]Shelley was great. It doesn’t sound like a compliment, but she really made you want her character to be murdered.

It's more of a tragedy if you don't, r57.

[Quote] Is it as good as Lost Horizon?

Not nearly as entertaining R54

[Quote] Isn’t that the bar where the preppy murder kids hung out?

That was Dorians on the UWS

R59 - Apparently Sally Kellerman sang her own songs and was not dubbed but it's hard to match her speaking voice with her singing.

R59 isnt that the one that Larry Kramer wrote? He said it was a piece of shit but his brother invested the little money he made it in EXTREMELY well and he ended up making a shit ton of money and never had to work again in his life.

Is it as good as Weekend at Bernie's?

Watching the documentary 'The Celluloid Closet' (1995) is where I first heard of 'The Lost Weekend.' There the novel is characterized as being about the effects of the closet on a homosexual, and the film adaptation as having substituted alcoholism as being the issue.

I've no idea if that's true; I never looked any deeper.

Sally had a way with a song...

R6, He must have been good in the sack if Joan married him.

R64 No, not true.

The Lost Weekend is Charles R. Jackson's first novel, published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1944. The story of a talented but alcoholic writer was praised for its powerful realism, closely reflecting the author’s own experience of alcoholism, from which he was temporarily cured. It served as the basis for the classic 1945 Oscar winning film adaptation. (From Wikipedia)

Why don’t look things up?

Phillip Terry and John Krasinski have a similar look.

I can’t see it.

R68, Definitely.

Don't see any resemblance.

The lounge singer in the purse-stealing scene was in a trio called The Rhythm Boys, with Bing Crosby.