We're getting down to the bitter dregs of reviews I wrote for the "old" web-site, so, appropriately, here's another one directed by Billy Wilder, that—cautionary tale that it is—still manages to hold up through force of writing and some astringent direction.
The Lost Weekend(Billy Wilder, 1945) Don Birnam (Ray Milland) is an aspiring writer, drunk and sober, caught in a self-defeating loop of dependence and neurosis. His dependence on, and devotion to, alcohol has put him into a tail-spin of false confidence and self-loathing where his dreams are only out of reach because he can't pick himself off the floor. His "rye" attitude drowns his dreams and feeds his nightmares and without it, he's brittle, paranoid and living in the future, waiting for the shot-glass aimed at his destruction.
Sounds like so much fun. Sounds like a "speech" or a lecture coming on. Sounds like one of those movies "for your own good." Sounds like I'd rather have a drink. Fortunately, Billy Wilder's in charge, and yes, it's preachy at times, but most of the time, it's tough as nails and doesn't hold back on what a louse Birnam is without alcohol, and how pathetic he is with it.
But, it's not "Pity-Party: The Movie." Wilder makes it clear that Birnam is his own worst enemy and the alcoholism is just a symptom. At the movie's start with Birnam barely through a week of sobriety and packing for a trip in the clean country upstate New York with his brother (Phillip Terry), it's all he can do to keep from eyeing the bottle he has hanging out his apartment window. Milland's performance is brittle, officious—like Cary Grant without the stick pulled out. But, once his brother and girlfriend (Jane Wyman, pathetically co-dependent) are out of the way, Milland's eyes go snaky looking for alcohol in his apartment's old familiar places. Then, once he's got a burn going on, Milland is in full glory as an actor—an amazing performance, eerily reminiscent of Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond four years in the future (and also directed by Wilder).
There are joys aplenty in this film, not just from some cracker-jack writing, but also Wilder's direction—putting Milland in front of a subtly discombobulating projection-screen for his long "wild turkey" chase to find a liquor store open on a Jewish holiday, the nightmare sequence of the alky ward and the subsequent "screamin' meemie" sequence in his apartment. There are also great performances by Howard Da Silva as a particularly wary bartender, and a wonderfully creepy performance by Frank Faylen, who is eerily complacent telling Birnam about the tortures of DT's.
Part tract, part horror film, but without the absurd homilies of Reefer Madness hysteria, The Lost Weekend lets you off with a warning this time.The Lost Weekend was a co-winner of the Grand Prix at the very first Cannes Film Festival (Ray Milland won Best Actor), and it went on to win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor. Only two films in history have won both the Palme and the Best Picture Oscar.*
Premiere Magazine voted it one of it's "25 Most Dangerous Movies."**
* This was written many years ago—see the addition below—but since that time, it's only happened one other time since, with the Korean film Parasite in 2019. It's still a pretty damn rare happenstance.
* Paramount was pressured by both the alcohol industry AND temperance societies not to release the film. It did so on a very limited basis to critical acclaim, encouraging the tee-totaling studio to take a chance and open it in more theaters. I originally ended the piece by saying "All that, and it has yet to be chosen for the National Film Registry.(What are they? Drunk?)" . It was voted into the National Film Registry in 2011
It's a Wonderful Life(Frank Capra, 1946) It's a legendary movie that was a failure upon release. It was the first movie by an Oscar winning populist director, an immigrant to the U.S., after serving as the chief propagandist for the Armed Services during the horrific days of World War II. The war had changed him. And when Frank Capra started work on a new project, it was a tough sell. But, Capra started a new production company, Liberty Films (with two other director-veterans, George Stevens and William Wyler) and the first project was an adaptation of a self-published short story by Phillip Van Doren Stern, "The Greatest Gift." RKO bought the film rights and after several drafts (by such as Dalton Trumbo, Clifford Odets and Marc Connelly, RKO encouraged Capra to read the short story, and Capra championed it, starting work on a script with a handful of writers—along with the credited husband-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, there were contributions by Michael Wilson, Jo Swerling, and even Dorothy Parker.
It is Christmas Eve in Bedford Falls. The thoughts and prayers there are causing a stir in Heaven and an angel-in-training (Henry Travers), but not—to use Lincoln's phrase—one of the "better angels," is dispatched to help one man, George Bailey (James Stewart) from throwing away his greatest gift—his life. But, what has transpired in that life to reach that point? For fully 99 minutes of the film's 129 minute length, the potential angel Clarence—and we—are given his history.
George has big dreams, but they are always dashed by circumstance and sacrifice for "the right thing." George is a victim of that old saw "life is what happens while we're busy making other plans." Life, the Depression, the decisions of others, all conspire to make George's life one of desperation, stuck in his hometown at a job he didn't intend...that makes him forget that he has an adoring wife (Donna Reed) and a clutch of kids at home, which might be taken away from him if the prominent banker in town (Lionel Barrymore) makes good on his plot to destroy George and his family's little savings-and-loan, made possible by the banker's theft of its assets.
It's a good life, but not the one George wanted, but he might even lose that, and so on that snowy dark Christmas Eve, he contemplates taking matters into his own hands and taking his own life, before it can be taken from him. For 3/4 of the movie's length, George is put through the grinder, sees all the work and sacrifice gone to naught, and the realization—from the banker's words—that he's worth more dead than alive. In a monetary sense, it may be true, but worth is more than dollars and cents. And with incarceration looming over him, George is only looking at the bottom line. And he's reached it.
What could be worse?
It is only by heavenly intervention that George can be shown the ledger of his life by contrast. Clarence grants him a look into an alternative version of the Universe—one in which he had never been born. And everything has changed—the people he's known, the people he's helped, his families that never knew him and never existed, the city he grew up in, all are a Dark Universe version of what he had known. The big difference is that no one knows him; he was never born. He is shown the significance of his life by the void that is left in its absence. His Christmas gift is the revelation of just how much his life is worth and the difference it has made.
It's a novel way to look at life, not too far different from the fantastical approach The Archers had with A Matter of Life and Death (released at approximately the same time) in dealing with the affairs on Earth—elements of fantasy are mixed with the hammering bluntness of recognizable reality to deal with matters that might be common with the audience. At the same time, Capra uses the flashback technique (ala Citizen Kane) to tell most of his story and compress a life into pertinent highlights, the better to mix and match the contrasting realities and make them as recognizable and significant to the audience as they do to George. We experience his horror to the alternate "Non-George" reality as soon as he does.
The film starts in Heaven, takes us through Purgatory and Hell as surely as "The Divine Comedy," and lands us back to Capra's version of Heaven—a democratized solution to the issues that have, given George's nightmare vision, been reduced in significance. For Bedford Falls, thoughts and prayers are not good enough—little do they know their significance to George—but grassroots actions, good-intentioned, save the day. Money, the root of George's depression, is volunteered, and George's worth is satisfied, both in their actions to his charity, but also in a way that would impress even a banker.
Significantly, the film begins and ends with the ringing of a bell—a call to action and attention.
The film is a depressive's nightmare, yet it has endured, long past its lackluster run at the box-office, and despite—and probably because of—a slippage into the public domain due to clerical neglect, as a Christmas classic since the 1970's, cheering and warming the hearts of millions for the special film that it is. There isn't much dissension in that, and its message of the worth of one life and its impact can touch anybody. For example: I had an acquaintance, a quite brilliant writer, who, after battling a long and terrible disease, joined with his family one night, all together, to watch It's a Wonderful Life, and, satisfied, went to bed where he passed away in his sleep. I can't think of It's a Wonderful Life without thinking of him, as little interaction as I had with him, and the two are inextricably linked. That's the significance of one life, how powerful it can be, and how it can influence the lives of others. We are "The Greatest Gift" to the world when we can make it a better place, when we can change it—for the better—and when we can see the individual value of the person, despite the attempt to turn us all into statistics, metrics, hits, followers, samples or net worth. As baseball announcer Red Barber used to say, God doesn't count the net worth or toys at the end of a life, He counts the scars. Merry Christmas to you all.
The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder, 1945) Don Birnam (Ray Milland) is an aspiring writer, drunk and sober, caught in a self-defeating loop of dependence and neurosis. His dependence on, and devotion to, alcohol has put him into a tail-spin of false confidence and self-loathing where his dreams are only out of reach because he can't pick himself off the floor. His "rye" attitude drowns his dreams and feeds his nightmares and without it, he's brittle, paranoid and living in the future, waiting for the shot-glass aimed at his destruction.
