Film of the Week: 3

The Lost Weekend (1945)

In 1946, the most prestigious of all film festivals was held for the first time, the Cannes Film Festival. It was held on September 20th at the resort city of Cannes on the French Riviera.

The festival was originally set to take place in 1939, however after the Nazi invasion of Poland, the festival was called off. Cecil B. DeMille’s Union Pacific ended up winning the first Palme d'Or that year.

The first festival in 1946 was quite the success and the Grand Prize of the Festival was given to 12 winners. This included films from all over the world such David Lean's Brief Encounter, Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City and of course Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend. Leaving Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious with only a nomination.

The Lost Weekend is not only one of the many great films of Billy Wilder (one of my personal favourite directors) but it is one of the greatest films ever put on the silver screen about alcoholism, next to Days of Wine and Roses.

Not only was the great Welsh actor Ray Milland (Dial M For Murder / The Big Clock) the first actor to win the best actor award at the Cannes film festival, but he also won the Academy award for best actor, a Golden Globe and two other awards in his phenomenal performance.

The film is based on the Charles R. Jackson novel of the same title from 1944. It is an account of the life of an alcoholic New York writer, Don Birnam. We see what he deals with in his day to day of non stop drinking and mainly his 'lost weekend' on a binge.

Original 1946 Cannes Poster

We see his tremendous efforts of trying to hide his alcohol from a woman and at one point, even on a rope hanging outside a window. Only a handful of actors have come close to achieving this greatness of acting as a pure alcoholic. Actors such as Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses, Richard Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Paul Newman in The Verdict, Albert Finney in Under the Volcano & Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.

Even the mood of this film is depressing and unlike all the other films mentioned above (asides from Days of Wine and Roses). It is the darkest of them all and is shot as a Film-Noir. The film went on to also win the Academy awards for Best Picture, Director and screenplay and for my money (asides from Rome, Open City) was the best film of the year in 1945.

Click here for the trailer