The Lost Weekend (1945)
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Reviews Counted:24
Fresh:24
Rotten:0
Average Rating:8.2/10
Consensus: Director Billy Wilder's unflinchingly honest look at the effects of alcoholism may have had some of its impact blunted by time, but it remains a powerful and remarkably prescient film.
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Ray Milland stars as alcoholic writer Don Birnam in Billy Wilder's first unabashedly dramatic film, and one of the first to deal in such painstaking detail with the disease of alcoholism. Don... [More]
Starring: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Philip Terry, Howard Da Silva
Director: Billy Wilder
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Reviews for The Lost Weekend
| Tomatometer | Critic | Review | Category |
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Director Billy Wilder's technique of photographing Third Avenue in the grey morning sunlight with a concealed camera to keep the crowds from being self-conscious gives this sequence the shock of reality. Full Review |
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4/5 |
Bold, sobering, intelligently written and acted with great skill by Ray Milland. Full Review |
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5/5 |
Painfully sincere and uncompromising look at alcoholism for a film released in 1945, with a superb central performance. Full Review |
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It is intense, morbid -- and thrilling. Here is an intelligent dissection of one of society's most rampant evils. Full Review |
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B+ |
It still makes one of the strongest statements about alcoholism, though time has taken away some of its edge. Full Review |
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Today it's less impressive but not without its virtues. Full Review |
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4/4 |
A stirring portrait of the horrors of alcohol addiction. Full Review |
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What makes the film so gripping is the brilliance with which Wilder uses John F Seitz's camerawork to range from an unvarnished portrait of New York brutally stripped of all glamour. Full Review |
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4/5 |
The changes made in adapting the book to the big screen are instructive: In the novel, Ray Milland's alcoholic Don was a troubled bisexual, but in the movie, he's a writer suffering from a creative block. Full Review |
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3/5 |
No review available.
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4/5 |
No review available.
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4/5 |
No review available.
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5/5 |
No review available.
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A landmark film in terms of Hollywood's treatment of adult subject matter as fair game. Full Review |
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5/5 |
More realistic than sentimentalized Hollywood crowd-pleasers like Harvey, and more accessible than complete downers like Leaving Las Vegas, The Lost Weekend is, to me, the definitive film on the subject of alcoholism. Full Review |
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4.5/5 |
One of the most justly celebrated 'problem films' of the 1940s. Full Review |
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4.5/5 |
A shatteringly realistic and morbidly fascinating film. Full Review |
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4/5 |
It now seems slightly simplistic, but it's still powerful
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2.5/4 |
Milland's DTs are visually frightening and unnerving, because of the odd score set to Theramin that's usually used for B space movies. Full Review |
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3.5/4 |
Wilder was way ahead of his time on this one. Full Review |
CommentLatest News for The Lost Weekend
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