Sat 10 Apr 2010
A Review by Dan Stumpf: THE LOST WEEKEND, Book and Movie.
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[5] Comments
● CHARLES JACKSON – The Lost Weekend. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1944. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft, including Signet #683, pb, 1948.
● THE LOST WEEKEND. Paramount Pictures, 1945. Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen. Screenplay: Charles Brackett, based on the novel by Charles R. Jackson. Director: Billy Wilder.
Thinking of books and the films made from them, I recenly re-watched and reread The Lost Weekend. I first read Charles Jackson’s 1944 novel back in High School, five years before I took my own first serious drink. Coming back to it now, I found some bits rather labored, way too many pages of rambling introspection, and a disappointing conclusion.
All that’s left is a gripping story that generates real suspense and painful pathos, a central character commanding the reader’s interest from the outset, and a heart-rending momentum that keeps the pages turning even through the more self-indulgent passages. That’s all.
The film Billy Wilder made out of this in ’45 softens the ending, adds a love interest, and cuts away the fatty introspection that pervades Jackson’s book, to emerge as a typically tough, brilliant and rather showy Billy Wilder movie: fast-paced, well-developed, and fleshed out with performances — even in the bit parts — that come alive on the screen.
Ray Milland’s break-out turn after a decade of shallow leads is the most famous, but there’s also memorable thesping from Howard DaSilva — and lovable Frank Faylen etches a part so evil it’ll make me dubious next time I see Wonderful Life.
One other thing I noticed: the last shot in this movie is really the first shot run backwards. That means something but I don’t know what.
April 10th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Dan
Great review of a movie too little seen today. Milland’s performance is stunning and I agree regarding Da Silva and Faylen (probably best remembered today as the cab driver from IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE and Dobie Gillis’s Dad) — to catch the latter in another memorable bad guy role check him out as the albino killer in WHISPERING SMITH — though he is practically unrecognizable in it.
And lest I forget, the DT’s scene in LOST WEEKEND may be the single most frightening non horror or suspense movie scene ever done.
Nice assessment of the novel too. For all his flaws Jackson was one of those writers worth pushing through. Here in particular the story is so powerful you forgive a lot just to see how it all turns out.
Re Milland’s performance, one of the keys is that he doesn’t abandon that light charm he was known for, but allows it to be the surface hiding the pain, and in this one he shows pain — real pain — in ways I don’t think anyone else had done in a film.
Drinking had mostly been played for comedy in film before this, once in a while for pathos, but this was the first time anyone tackled it as a disease with consequences and physical as well as emotional pain.
Of course it wasn’t as much of a stretch as it may have seemed at the time. Wilder had worked with Milland before in his first film as a director, THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR, and in Mitchell Leisen’s ARISE MY LOVE for which he co-wrote the screenplay. He knew he wasn’t gambling that much on Milland’s ability. The bigger gamble was whether or not the movie going public would accept Milland in the role.
And the same gamble had paid off for Wilder with Fred MacMurray, another ‘light’ actor who had given a memorable dramatic performance in DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Later he would find similar gold going much darker with William Holden and Jack Lemmon than their usual screen persona.
For another look at Da Silva in a great bad guy role check out Anthony Mann’s BORDER INCIDENT, and to see him in something completely different see his brilliant Ben Franklin in 1776, singing, dancing, and signing the Declaration of Independence in a recreation of his Broadway triumph.
April 11th, 2010 at 12:04 am
Not his most challenging part at all, but Da Silva’s performance as the kind and supportive psychiatrist in Frank & Elinor Perry’s DAVID AND LISA (1962) was the first film of his I saw in a theater. (The first art house indie film I ever saw too.)
Da Silva was excellent in it.
I’ve seen huge chunks of THE LOST WEEKEND on TV many times, but not from the beginning.
In purely cinematic terms, how does the film and its content measure up against Blake Edward’s DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES?
April 11th, 2010 at 4:13 am
Rick
I don’t know what Dan will say, but for me, fine as DAYS AND WINE AND ROSES is, it lacks the toughness of LOST WEEKEND. Certainly Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick suffer in DAYS, and their drinking plays havoc with their marriage and lives, and both films are uncompromising in showing the effects of drinking on an individual.
But for me WEEKEND seems the harder edged of the two and perhaps the closer to most peoples experience. In DAYS Lemmon and Remick begin as really bright, happy, successful people who indulge too much and gradually get drawn into the trap until finally Lemmon has to walk away in order to save himself and their child while it is left for the viewer to imagine what Remick’s fate is going to be. It reminds me a bit of SMASHUP THE STORY OF A WOMAN in that for all its toughness there is a slight scent of soap to it all.
WEEKEND is closer to another Susan Hayward film I’LL CRY TOMORROW though, where the descent into drinking is harder edged, and a conscious effort is made to both avoid soap and avoid any hint of glamor. There is no glamorous cocktail party drinking for the most part. Milland sits alone in bars guzzling or in his room. He hits bottom virtually alone and goes through hell. There is still a bit of glamor to the drinking in much of DAYS and SMASHUP, but not in LOST WEEKEND. There it is shown as a lonely desperate experience without bright talk or brittle humor.
I guess the difference would be the drunks in DAYS are Madison Avenue types, while those in LOST WEEKEND or I’LL CRY TOMORROW would more likely be found in a bar with Charles Bukowski, David Goodis, or Jim Thompson characters.
In one sense WEEKEND starts where Remick’s story ends in DAYS. WEEKEND is the story of where her life is going, an endless spiral into near madness, degradation, and pain.
I’ll put it this way. You might come out of DAYS thinking you can handle the stuff, but watch WEEKEND, and you’ll think hard the next drink you order. DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES is high class, brilliantly written, and superbly acted soap opera. LOST WEEKEND is a horror story. DAYS is they way AA members would like it to have been, WEEKEND is the way it really was for most people.
But Henry Mancini’s score wins hands down.
April 11th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
We’ll have to see if Dan chips in now, but to me this is an awfully good contrast and comparison of the two movies. Thanks, David!
April 11th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Wow, great off-the-cuff essay, David. Brilliant stuff. Thank you for responding so quickly–and so completely.
I will be renting or buying LOST WEEKEND for sure as quickly as I can get to it…