Nominated for the Best Motion Picture Academy Award The Lost Weekend competed for top honors of 1945 against Anchors Aweigh, The Bells of St. Mary's, Mildred Pierce and Spellbound. Appearing as it did towards the end of World War II with its film noir-ish motifs and social problem centerpiece, Billy Wilder's movie blew out the competition through sheer force of its sobriety (no pun intended) and emotional weight.

As the rendering of an alcoholic's descent into the abyss of his addiction through a mix of flashbacks and real time sequences, the picture was a clarion call about the potential impact of realist filmmaking with regard to topical issues. Importantly, it was also released in spite of test screenings with audiences that were shocked by the grittiness of the film nearly causing Paramount Pictures to shelve it in the face of a possible scandal.

Opening on a Friday afternoon with a lovely tracking shot of the Manhattan skyline, failed novelist Don Birnam (Ray Milland) packs his bag for a weekend getaway with the help of his protective brother Wick (Phillip Terry). Don's girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) arrives to wish the pair goodbye but Wick discovers Don's whiskey stash and pours it down the bathroom drain. Left alone to finish packing Don instead heads into the city with pilfered funds for booze to kick off another in a long string of benders.

From that point on his weekend spirals ever downward hitting each of the steps along the way to utter depravity. He gets drunk and forgets to meet Wick for their train out of town. He gets drunker still and avoids Helen who refuses to leave him alone. He wakes up the next day to repeat the cycle and gradually loses his moral inhibitions against pawning his personal affects, lying to his erstwhile friends and committing petty theft.

When he passes out and wakes up in a city hospital's alcoholic's ward he seems to reach rock bottom, especially after witnessing other drunks scream about imaginary vermin haunting them in the night. Still not dissuaded from his addiction he continues drinking and collapses at home where Helen collects him for a meal and a proper night's sleep.

By the next morning, however, his mood has changed. He takes Helen's fur coat and pawns it for a pistol he'd previously sold with which he intends to commit suicide. But before engineering his demise Helen intercepts him quit cold turkey by channeling his energies into writing the book he's long complained of not finishing. With a cigarette doused in a glass of whisky Don seems headed down the straight and narrow with Helen's help and the optimism of a better tomorrow.

Captivating as both a character study and examination of addiction The Lost Weekend begins well enough and focuses on three main characters with only a handful of strong supporting players. Among the leads Don is immediately likable, smart and charismatic and it's his self-awareness that endows him with humility and the sense of being lost. Wick is not much more than a backdrop for Don's behavior and Helen is so saintly, innocent and appealing that it's a very small risk to see why Don is drawn to her.

Through flashbacks that organize Don's lost weekend we first learn how he discovered his dependence on alcohol but also how he found his salvation through the commitments of true love. In fact it's this combination of romantic love with alcohol abuse that remains a significant theme in the film. This connection is made explicit with the origin of Don and Helen's relationship, as revealed in flashback, which causes him to quit drinking even as it eventually leads to his relapse.

After a number of interesting vignettes detailing Don's struggle with booze and his resulting bad behavior, though, The Lost Weekend disappoints in its final act that focuses on Don's suicide solution and a speedy conclusion. Folksy wisdom about overcoming alcoholism cold turkey overwhelms the building dramatic tension with a trite narrative ploy. Though Helen's personal conviction about helping her boyfriend overcome his demon is laudable the way she cleaves the drunkard-Don from the sensitive writer-Don she loves is too pat, convenient and unrealistic.

Of course retrospect allows us to minimize the movies conclusion after so many years of TV specials with their collective thousands of hours spent working over similar material. Plus we have the advantage of more clinical and therapeutic tools to root out the bases of alcohol addiction not to mention its treatment and recovery. In this sense, and for all its excellent writing, strong narrative structure and good acting, The Lost Weekend is a flip melodrama that ruins its compelling realism with a wholly unconvincing ending.

This is because alcoholism is everywhere shown in the film as having the power to unmake Don's professionalism and take away his personal dignity save for his romantic love for Helen that finally helps him defy the avarice of his disease. Disregarding the lived experience of alcoholics and their circle of families and friends everywhere, such a notion is useful for telling big screen stories even though it's dangerously glib. Yet Wilder's movie was one of the first Hollywood films to put alcoholism at its center and for that fact alone it has an historical importance that may outstrip the frayed edges of its dramatic action.

To wit, Wilder's adaptation of the novel by Charles R. Jackson with his frequent co-writer and producer Charles Brackett rendered Don's disease with a sense of realism as set in New York City. Thus Don relentlessly pursues booze with a zeal normally reserved for action heroes. He lays waste to his brother's apartment looking for money and a few drops of whiskey. He plies his charms to win drinks from his favorite bartender and insults casual friends by forgetting his commitments. Then he wanders the streets, hungry and exhausted with the shakes, looking for a pawnshop to cash-in his typewriter as the connecting symbol of his drunkard- and writer-selves.

The film also briefly examines the way friends and family members of alcoholics are forced to adapt to the disease. Wick and Helen each try coping with Don's problem including various stages of anger, self-incrimination and disavowal. In the end, though, The Lost Weekend is Don's story and its impact rests on Milland's performance.

Everywhere sympathetic but not particularly heroic, Milland is an everyman with refinements who is asked to shed light on a taboo subject ignored in virtually every previous Hollywood movie. Though he adequately expresses frustration about the limitations of his crumbling world, perhaps best symbolized by his hanging a bottle of booze out Wick's bedroom window while packing for his trip, Milland gives an expert and nuanced performance once he begins Don's descent into alcohol abuse. Never more or less than a disappointment to himself, Milland's Don Birnam is a failure with a dream. It's this dream that finally makes him responsible for his actions and redeemable despite the sewer he walks through before emerging into the light of Helen's affection.

Our current sensibility writes off much of Milland's physical person as not being mangled enough under the weight of his addiction. Though he's described as being tired, run down, hungry and paranoid throughout the picture, especially when he nightmarishly begins to hallucinate, he's still relatively polished and well spoken. For 1945, however, Don Birnam was an eye-opener for audiences and filmmakers alike, all of whom were looking for new subjects and styles in movies at the end of World War II.

By bringing alcoholism into the fold of prestige studio films, and by earning the best director, script and picture of the year Academy Awards The Lost Weekend served its purpose. Along with a few other courageous films and filmmakers, Otto Preminger, The Moon Is Blue, William Wyler, Dead End, Howard Hughes and The Outlaw among them, Wilder's Best Motion Picture of 1945 also expanded the palate for American movies and opened up the art of cinema for the second half of the 20th century.