Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

grantss Don Birnam is an alcoholic. His brother Wick and girlfriend Helen know but believe that he is on the wagon, a belief he does his best not to shatter. They try to keep him sober and healthy by arranging trips and other such events. One is this weekend - Don and Wick are heading to the country. However, Don manages to delay the trip and then evade it altogether, in order to get drunk in a bar. He has no money, so often ends up getting his alcohol by more and more outlandish and nefarious means. He does have two things going for him: Helen loves him and will do anything to see him shake his addiction. The other is that he has a great talent for writing, and has great ambition in that regard. However, his productivity as a writer is undermined by his alcoholism, creating a downward spiral of despair and addiction. Sensing his own plight, his thoughts turn darker...From master movie-maker Billy Wilder, a film that realistically and hauntingly shows the effects of alcoholism, and the plight its victims find themselves in. Very claustrophobic, in that you can sense how Don Birnam is trapped, and how he knows he's trapped. All his best intentions, and those of his loved ones, come to nothing, creating an intense, despairing situation.Excellent plot, very well directed by Wilder. He builds the intensity and despair well, starting with a rather light scene and then slowly turning up the darkness and anxiety. The conclusion is a bit too neat and swift though. Considering what came before, it really needed a bit more open-endedness.Great work by Ray Milland in the lead role, a performance for which he received a Best Actor Oscar. Good support from Jane Wyman as Helen. Billy Wilder got his first, and second, Oscar with this movie - Best Director and Best Screenplay. The movie itself won Best Picture at the 1946 Oscars.While it may seem less topical a subject nowadays, with drug addiction replacing alcoholism as the source for addiction movies, this is no less confronting, or harrowing.

William Samuel The Lost Weekend is a true masterpiece; undoubtedly the best movie of 1945. Ray Milland, as failed author Don Birnam, gives one of the most powerful and sympathetic portrayals of alcoholism ever to grace the screen. And what an alcoholic he plays!He's the kind of drunk who can't stand a single minute without booze. For him, waiting till nine for the bars to open is torture. He downs shot after shot of whiskey until he's broke and the bartender is begging him to stop. There's not a bar in town that will give him credit .At home, he can down an entire bottle in one night. And he doesn't care what he drinks either. "Two bottles of rye", he tells the clerk at the liquor store. "What brand?" "The cheapest, you know that."He drinks with the sole intention of getting drunk, which he is nearly half the time. He's smart, ambitious and witty when he's sober, but that never lasts long. He's never finished a novel or held a steady job. For the last five years, he's lived on the charity of his brother Wick (Phillip Terry). And in his moments of lucidity, he understands all of this.On of the film's best scenes is the flashback to when his girlfriend Helen first discovers his condition. He couldn't stand to meet her parents because he knew that his past would come to light. Now he lays it all out for her in no uncertain detail. He pretty well sums things up when he tells her "I'm nothing, I've never been anything, and I'll never be anything." That was three years ago, but she's still with him. His advice to her is dead on- If she were smart, she'd run away as fast as she can. Yet she refuses to give up on him. But now, left alone for the weekend after he misses a train to the family farm, he hits rock bottom like never before. With no-one to stop him, he drinks like there's no tomorrow, both at home and at his favorite bar. After recounting his past to his bartender Nat, he decides he's finally going to do it. He's going to start- and finish- a novel.But he can't even write the first line before he's desperate for a drink. Still completely wasted, he sets out do the unthinkable: hawk his typewriter for money to buy more booze. But every pawn shop he comes to is closed. Before his odyssey is over, he'll have spent a day and part of a night in the hospital drunk ward and pulled off a daring liquor store robbery without a weapon. And once he's finally home, that's when the hallucinations start, just like the nice man at the hospital told him they would.And from there it gets worse. He finally reaches the point where he doesn't want a drink anymore. He just wants it all to end- forever. In the movie's tensest scene, Helen tries to talk him out of it any way she can, even encouraging him to have another drink. At this point, I didn't see any way that this could end in anything but tragedy. But it's here that the director, Billy Wilder, did the impossible. He not only ended the movie on an uplifting note, he actually did it without making me feel cheated. That is why I give The Lost Weekend a perfect ten.

Ross622 For alcoholics there is a lot of lessons to be learned in the film that earned Billy Wilder his first academy award for best director The Lost Weekend. Though not really a film that deserved to win best picture this movie knows a lot about alcoholism and how addicting it could be when people didn't know the effects at the time of it's release. The movie stars Ray Milland as Don Birnam an alcoholic writer who binges on alcohol for exactly 3 days straight, (as well as deserving his Oscar for proving the bad effects.). Though not a great film it also tells us how crazy a drunkard can really be. It's Milland who gives a better performance than anyone else in this film but the Jane Wyman performance is a little tiny problem with it, which that was in the ending scene when Birnam wants to kill himself but Wyman's character does one good thing and that is persuade him not to kill himself but the biggest mistake is that SHE TRIES TO MAKE HIS ALCOHOL ADDICTION A LOT WORSE THAN IT WAS BEFORE. Wilder does a decent job with directing this film, but one thing just leaves me with one question, Why did this film get so much Oscars including best picture that it didn't deserve?

mamalv What a movie and what a performance by Ray Milland. Don Birnam is an alcoholic writer who just can't get started on anything. He is brilliant and tortured by his own alcoholic demons. This is based on the true life of the writer Charles Jackson. If ever there was a more truthful look at a drunk, this is probably the best. The only other true look would be The Days of Wine and Roses. There are many light moments where Milland goes into line after line of how he wound up this way. How his brother Wick had given him a place to live and a few dollars for shows and smokes. Jane Wyman is the long suffering girlfriend who won't give up on him. Sometimes we feel that she won't give up because she needs to be right for him and herself. I like Howard DeSilva as the bartender Nate. Even though we despise him for giving the booze to Don, we really feel he does in some way care for this man. He along with Wyman see touches of a really wonderful mind being wasted in a bottle. Milland lost a lot of weight to play this part that was turned down by numerous big stars. He is still so handsome that even when he is in the depths of a alcoholic weekend we wish he would clean up and get back to his life. Many people do not realize that the street shots were from hidden cameras in store fronts and vans. So many people really thought that Milland staggering along was really drunk. In fact some people called the studio to warn them about his bender. Magnificent as he was in this film we had always wished that he had more dramatic parts like this one. The industry just never gave him the best of the best. Well deserved Oscar for this great actor.