18th Academy Awards · 1946
The Lost Weekend
Directed by Billy Wilder
“The screen dares to open the strange and savage pages of a shocking bestseller!”
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The story
Longtime alcoholic Don Birnam has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.
What critics & audiences say
Tomatometer97%Fresh#10 of 98 winnersIMDb7.844K votes#49 of 98 winners
TMDB7.6/ 10
Famous lines
Don: Let me work it out my way, I'm trying. I'm trying!
Helen: I know you're trying, Don. We're both trying. You're trying not to drink and I'm trying not to love you.
It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar.
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can't take 'quiet desperation.'
You know that stuff about pink elephants? That's the bunk. It's little animals! Little tiny turkeys in straw hats.
I'm Michelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh, painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto.
There are two of us, you know. Don the Drunk and Don the Writer.
I can pick an alkie with one eye shut. You're an alkie. You'll come back. They all do.
At night, the stuff's a drink. In the morning, it's medicine.
I've never done anything, I'm not doing anything, I never will do anything. Zero, zero, zero!
I can't cut it short. I'm on that merry-go-round. You gotta ride it all the way.
Quotes via Wikiquote
Fun facts
- Liquor interests allegedly enlisted gangster Frank Costello to offer Paramount $5 million for the film's negative so they could burn it. Billy Wilder quipped that if they'd offered him $5 million, he would have.Wikipedia · Production and notable features
- Billy Wilder was drawn to the story after co-writing Double Indemnity with Raymond Chandler, a recovering alcoholic whom the stressful collaboration drove back to drinking. Wilder made the film partly to explain Chandler to himself.Wikipedia · Production and notable features
- To capture realism, Wilder hid cameras behind boxes and in trucks and filmed Ray Milland walking up Third Avenue in Manhattan among real pedestrians who had no idea a movie was being made.Wikipedia · Production and notable features
- A preview audience laughed at Ray Milland's performance and the studio considered shelving the film, partly because the preview print had a temporary track of upbeat jazz instead of Miklós Rózsa's score.Wikipedia · Production and notable features
- Miklós Rózsa's score was among the first to feature the theremin, using its eerie sound to convey the pathos of alcoholism.Wikipedia · Production and notable features
- The Lost Weekend shared the Grand Prix at the very first Cannes Film Festival, making it one of only four films, with Marty, Parasite and Anora, to win both Best Picture and Cannes' top prize.Wikipedia · Cannes Film Festival
- The production got unprecedented permission to film inside the alcoholic ward of New York's Bellevue Hospital, a request that would be denied to later films.Wikipedia · Production and notable features
- Jose Ferrer turned down the role of Don Birnam, Olivia de Havilland was tied up in a lawsuit for the role of Helen, and Katharine Hepburn and Jean Arthur were reportedly also considered.Wikipedia · Production and notable features
- Three days after winning his Oscar, Ray Milland spoofed the film on The Jack Benny Show. When asked how he chased off the DT hallucinations, he replied, "I threw my Oscar at them!"Wikipedia · Adaptations
- Made on a budget of $1.25 million, The Lost Weekend grossed $11 million at the box office.Wikipedia · Box office performance