THE LOST WEEKEND

US, 1945, 99 minutes, Black and white.
Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling.
Directed by Billy Wilder.

The Lost Weekend was considered a very daring film for 1944-5 and most of those involved in it were advised by friends not to go on with it. A film about a desperate alcoholic during a three-day bender would not be popular with cinema audiences. As it was, Billy Wilder went on to make a very harrowing film about alcoholism as well as to win the Oscar for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor for Ray Milland.

Seen to-day, the film jars at times with some moralising, and the hopeful ending might seem too facile, but, by and large, this film has enormous impact, especially through the direction and Ray Milland's performance, Some of the sequences - as in the night-club, the hospital and in the famous desperate walk down Third Avenue with the money-lending houses all closed - are most moving and compare well with more modern treatments of the theme (for instance Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses).

Billy Wilder makes interesting and entertaining films, ranging from The Apartment to Sunset Boulevard to Stalag 7 and Some Like it Hot.

1. How good a documentary of an alcoholic was this film? Why?

2. Was the ending realistic enough? Or was it a happy moralistic ending? How did this affect the rest of the film or could the film stand without its ending?

3. How effective was the flashback technique of the film? Did the film run smoothly?

4. What impression did Don Burnam make on you when you first met him? Did he have a pleasant personality? Was he a weak character? How shrewd was he in getting drink?

5. Did you sympathise with him and with Helen? What else could they have done?

6. Did Ray Milland's performance give you insights into the behaviour, motivation, cravings of an alcoholic? Which scenes impressed you most? Why? How did Ray Milland use his eyes to convey craftiness and suspicion?

7. What contribution did the musical score and its style, especially in drink-craving sequences, make to the whole film?

8. How moving did you find the various set speeches in the film that got across to the audience the feelings of an alcoholic, the quiet desperation, the sense of failure, the double personality inside him?

9. Why didn't Don let Helen help him? Was she sincere in her efforts or too self-assured? What did the flashbacks reveal about his relationship with her?

10. How did Don depend on Nat, the barman, on Gloria? How did they help him?

11. Why were the sequences of his going home to begin his novel, his smashing his apartment to find the hidden bottle, the agony of his walk through flew York to find all the pawnbrokers closed, his humiliation at the safe after he stole the woman's handbag, so compelling and moving?

12. Why were the sequences at the City hospital so frightening? Why did Bim act so harshly? What effect did the scene of so many with the D.T. 's have on you?

13. How did his begging Gloria for money show his desperation?

14. Alcohol brings on delirium and the diseases of the night. Were the scenes of Don's delirium well done - the reality of the mouse and the bat? How did you react to this?

15. Why did Helen and Don finally clash? Could more have been asked of Helen?

16. Was Don's final despair credible? his "fear, shame and moral anaemia"?

17. How much compassion did this film ask of its audience?

18. Was the "ending too contrived and optimistic? Why?

19. How would this film affect a person's attitude towards alcohol and alcoholism?