The Lost Weekend: The Downward Spiral

Just so nobody is misled, the subtitle here is referring to depression—stage four on the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief—and not the brilliant 1994 Nine Inch Nails album. Spirals are an apt image to use when discussing Billy Wilder’s 1945 Best Picture winner, as the film deals with the cyclical nature of alcoholism (of which in this film depression is most certainly a symptom). The film was released in November of 1945—a season after the United States won victory on both fronts in the Second World War—and it signals a turning point in subject matter for Oscar-winning films. The Lost Weekend is the first Best Picture winner to directly confront A Very Serious Issue, and three of the remaining four Best Picture winners of the decade have social issues as their subject matter (the period of readjustment for homecoming veterans, anti-Semitism, political corruption, and hell—Hamlet is a Very Serious Play). I don’t think that the mood of the county was necessarily that of depression at the time of the release of The Lost Weekend, but I do think that the country—having lived through nearly half a decade of bloody armed conflict, was ready to have films reflect the issues facing Americans at home.

The Lost Weekend opens with a left-to-right pan of the Manhattan skyline. The camera settles on an open window of an ordinary apartment, a bottle of whiskey dangling outside, tied to the window crank. Inside is Don Birnam, a permanently blocked writer (played by Welsh-born actor Ray Milland, in a performance completely and totally worthy of the Best Actor Oscar he was awarded for it). Don and his brother Wick (Phillip Terry) are packing for “a long weekend” to a country farm away from the city. At this point, Don has been on the wagon for ten days, and the bottle of booze tied to the window is a temptation he can bear no longer to resist. Almost immediately he starts lying. His girlfriend, Helen (Jane Wyman, an ex-Mrs. Ronald Reagan) has stopped by to see Don and Wick off, and Don fobs off a pair of concert tickets onto her and Wick—thus delaying their departure on the 3:15 train out of town to 6:30—claiming he wants to have a couple of hours to assemble himself. Wick, who is no fool, finds the dangling bottle, drains it and leaves with Helen after an oft-repeated and always unsuccessful argument with Don about his drinking.

After the pair leave, Don searches high and low through his usual hiding places in the apartment, but Wick has been successful in cleansing the apartment of booze. Don catches a break when their cleaning lady drops by. Wick has left her ten dollars in wages, but Don spins a lie to her, shoos her off, and absconds with her wages. His first destination: the liquor store, where he promptly buys two bottles of the cheapest rye (“none of that twelve year old aged in wood—not for me”). His next destination: Nat’s Bar, where he strikes up a conversation with the eponymous bartender (Howard Da Silva). Nat knows the depth of Don’s alcoholism, but Don is able to charm him into serving him a glass of whiskey. Director Wilder focuses on the circular impression the condensation on the glass leaves behind on the bar (no coasters at Nat’s, apparently). Don observes: “Don't wipe it away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle. You know, the circle is the perfect geometric figure. No end, no beginning.” Don is keenly aware of the imprisoning nature of his alcoholism, but he is unable and certainly unwilling to break the cycle. He reflects, “What you don't understand, all of you, is that I've got to know it's around. That I can have it if I need it. I can't be cut off completely. That's the devil. That's what drives you crazy.”

Hours pass, and the circles pile up on the bar—first six, then twelve (Wilder uses this image not only as a visual metaphor but also as a clever way to signify both the passage of time and how sauced Don is)—and Don has completely forgotten about the 6:30 train and blown off his commitment to his brother. He manages to return to the apartment—sober enough to narrowly avoid Wick and Helen as they leave in disgust—satisfied that he will be alone for a long weekend with his two bottles of booze. Don hides one of the whiskey bottles in the overhead lamp fixture. Early the next morning, Don rises—bottles empty now and compulsively walks over to Nat’s, for in Don’s eyes, a minute without alcohol is time wasted. Nat doesn’t want to serve him, but Don replies “I can't cut it short. I'm on that merry-go-round. You gotta ride it all the way. Round and round until that blasted music wears itself out and the thing dies down and comes to a stop...” Again, Don is aware that he is trapped in a self-repeating loop, and the brilliant script by Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett gives another brilliant metaphor for addiction.

Gloria (Doris Dowling), a call-girl enamored with Don, comes into Nat’s. They flirt, and he makes a date with her. Nat chides Don for making a date with Gloria when he knows that Helen is in love with him, and the conversation turns to Don telling the story of when he first met her. In the first of two extended flashbacks (undoubtedly the influence of Citizen Kane), Don tells of the night when he took in a performance of La Traviata. Don is already entwined in the throes of his addiction. He has stashed a bottle of rye in his raincoat, but he checked the raincoat before the performance started. When the singers perform “Libiamo ne’lieti calici (The Drinking Song)" Don hallucinates seeing his raincoat on each of the singers, each drinking from his bottle of rye, he becomes overwhelmed by the urge to drink. When he returns to the coat check, he finds out he has been misticketed and is given a woman’s leopard print coat. Don cannot retrieve his coat until the person who has his claim ticket returns, so he is forced to wait through the remainder of the performance and until all the rest of the coats are claimed before he can retrieve his bottle. The leopard print coat belongs to Helen, and although Don is very rude at first (he’s been deprived of his booze for an extended period of time, after all) they strike up an easy rapport. Helen invites him to a cocktail party, to which Don declines—he’s an alcoholic, but he prefers relative solace when drinking. However, his bottle accidentally smashes to bits on the street, and Don reconsiders Helen’s invitation and leaves with her, caring far less about her company than the booze fix that will be available to him.

Don continues his conversation with Nat, and goes into further detail on the background of his relationship with Helen. The film’s second extended flashback finds Don waiting in a hotel lobby for Helen. She is introducing him to her parents, who are in town from Toledo, Ohio. Don hasn’t met Helen’s folks, but he overhears a couple talking about a 33 year-old writer with no job who never graduated from Cornell University. Don quickly deduces that the older couple is Helen’s parents, and his eavesdropping smashes his self-confidence and Don again bolts for booze. He returns home and confesses his insecurities to Wick, but hides when Helen—whom Don ditched—comes calling for him, Wick covers up for his brother, confessing that he is an alcoholic, and that Don is away on an interview. In a rare moment of nobility, Don emerges from hiding, and confesses to Helen that he is a drunk. He explains that there are two Dons—Don the Writer and Don the Drunk—and that his life vacillates between the creative highs he feels when drinking and the drudgery of the lows when the booze has worn off. Helen believes that Don can overcome his addiction, but he tells her, Come on, let's face reality. I'm thirty-three. I'm living on the charity of my brother. “Room and board free. Fifty cents a week for cigarettes and an occasional ticket to a show or a concert –all out of the bigness of his heart. And it is a big heart and a patient one...I've never done anything, I'm not doing anything, I never will do anything. Zero, zero, zero!”

The zero Don describes himself as is yet another circle. When the scene dissolves back to Nat’s, Don becomes resolute, and vows to begin writing his novel. Don returns home, and begins typing. His novel is titled The Bottle, and it is dedicated to Helen. Don is again seized by his alcoholic cravings, and again completely overturns the apartment in search of booze, forgetting that only yesterday he stashed a bottle of rye in his light fixture. Don again leaves, is unsuccessful in trying to steal money for liquor, and returns home, dejected. He finds solace only when he turns on the lights, sits down, and sees the shadow of the whiskey bottle projected onto the ceiling, its hiding spot illuminated.

The film is wise to show Don repeat behaviors. He is constantly lying or wheedling his way into a drink. He steals. He cheats. He blows off engagements (Nat proves prophetic when he says that Don will stand up Gloria). He forgets where he hides his bottles of rye. Don’s life plays like a record on repeat. The scene that does the best job of illuminating the spiral that Don is caught in and cannot escape from comes the next day in the film. Don has decided to hock his typewriter for cash to buy alcohol. He desperately searches for an open pawnshop, but finds that they are all closed because it is Yom Kippur. Wilder pioneered a technique using rear-projection to illustrate this scene, by squaring Don in the middle of the frame as neon signs and storefronts flash and rush by him. This technique has been used in countless films and television shows since it was first used here.

Another technique pioneered in The Lost Weekend is the use of the Theremin in a film score for the first time. Miklós Rózsa liked the instrument for the eerie, wailing effects the Theremin produces. The instrument is ubiquitous in science-fiction and horror films, and in many ways the Theremin is absolutely appropriate because The Lost Weekend is a horror film, with an uncontrollable, two-faced monster at the center. Don falls in an accident, and awakens in the detox ward of New York City’s infamous Bellevue Hospital (Wilder secured permission to film in the actual detox ward, lending the picture tremendous authenticity). He doesn’t take the pills to ward off the DT’s, although he is warned of their effects, and he is warned of the consequences of escape: “You just hit the nearest bar and bounce right back again. What we call the quick ricochet...” During a commotion, Don recklessly slips out of the hospital, steals a bottle of booze, and returns to his apartment. Once there he experiences terrifying hallucinations (it is here where Rózsa’s Theremin really kicks in full throttle)—a rat emerges from a hole and a bat (deliberately phony looking), swoops down and snaps its neck, its blood oozing down his apartment walls—and Don, overwhelmed by the phantasmagoria he sees, howls into the night. Helen—who has been working with Don’s landlady to try and catch him while he’s home—runs in and comforts Don, but he feels that his death is imminent.

Originally, The Lost Weekend was set to end after this scene. However, the film has an upbeat coda. Don attempts suicide but is rescued by Helen. The theme of “the love of a good woman” saving a broken man is used time and again in Hollywood (and in several Best Picture winners), and it is milked to maximum effect. Don is able to start writing again, beginning by describing the whiskey bottle dangling out of his window. Wilder ends the film by panning right-to-left out the apartment window, mirroring the opening shot of the film and closing the circle of the film.

On one hand, I think the ending betrays Don’s character. No evidence is given within the film that he makes a fundamental change, and while Helen’s belief in him never wavers, I don’t know if Don ever has a moment of clarity. On the other—nothing suggests that Don will be able to stay sober either, and with Wilder choosing to end the film with a closing shot that mirrors the opening, it can be inferred that Don is never able to break the cycle. I think also, that a socially responsible choice is made by showing it is possible to overcome alcoholism. Either way, the “tacked on happy ending” can be looked at in more than one way.

The Lost Weekend represents a point in the history of Oscar-winning pictures when it became okay to have a representation of reality move and entertain audiences as much as a period epic or a feel good film. Wilder directed a frank, uncompromising and depressing film. With America coming out of WWII, it would seem natural that a sentimental, feel-good picture like Going My Way would capture the Oscar (its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary’s, was one of the five films The Lost Weekend triumphed over). With the victory of The Lost Weekend the award winning films of America looked to conquer the social issues that plagued the country. (The Lost Weekend isn’t overtly political, but Wilder, in the scene at Bellevue Hospital, includes a line where the blame for the rise of alcohol addiction in the country is placed squarely at the feet of Prohibition.) There were battles on the homefront that still needed to be fought, and Hollywood was accepting of that challenge.


DETAILS

The Lost Weekend (1945)

Director: Billy Wilder

Starring: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Philip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling

Studio: Paramount Pictures (though Universal now owns the rights)

Total Oscars: 4 (Best Picture, Best Director—Billy Wilder, Best Actor—Ray Milland*, Best Adapted Screenplay—Wilder and Charles Brackett) from 7 total nominations (Best B&W Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Score—Miklós Rózsa**)
*Milland gave the simplest speech ever at an Oscar ceremony—he simply bowed and walked off stage.
** Miklós Rózsa was also nominated for his Theremin heavy score in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound . He took home the first of three Oscars for Hitchcock’s film.

NEXT BLOG: The Best Years of Our Lives

Rebecca: One From the Master

Inarguably, Alfred Hitchcock is one of the greatest directors that ever lived. I’d have him on a shortlist with about three or four others—for arguments’ sake, lets lump him along with Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg—to round out a top five. Like Kurosawa and Kubrick (and both Scorsese and Spielberg were given their Oscars long after they had done most of their best work), Hitchcock was never awarded Best Director, despite helming such classics as Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Notorious (the one with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman—not the recent biopic about the Notorious B.I.G.) and The Birds. Rebecca, though an excellent picture, is probably firmly in the middle when it comes to Hitchcock’s filmography, but the film had the advantage of being a David O. Selznick production. By the time the Academy Awards ceremony honoring the best films of 1940 rolled around, Selznick used his considerable clout to secure the Best Picture Oscar for Rebecca.

Now, I haven’t seen every picture that was up for Best Picture the year Rebecca won. I do know though that it was up against some more traditional Oscar fare. The Philadelphia Story—with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Best Actor Oscar winner James Stewart (whose Oscar was almost certainly a make-up award for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)—was a nominee. The Great Dictator—Charlie Chaplin’s satirization of Adolf Hitler—was also nominated. John Ford—the most honored director by the Academy with four Best Director Oscars—had two films in the running, The Long Way Home and The Grapes of Wrath (for which Ford took home his second Oscar). The Grapes of Wrath—with its John Steinbeck source material, iconic performance from Henry Fonda, and timely subject matter (America, after all was coming out of the Great Depression)—would seem like the most likely winner. Selznick proved to be a master campaigner, as Rebecca was completed and ready for release in 1939, but he did not want Hitchcock’s film to compete against Gone With the Wind. He cannily realized he had two prestige pictures on his hands, and delayed Rebecca’s release to become the first producer to win Best Picture two years in a row (and he certainly wouldn’t be the last to use this trick to garner Academy attention).

The power Selznick accrued after his massive victory with Gone With the Wind was formidable enough to secure the Oscar for Rebecca, which was a film unlike any of the dozen Best Picture winners before it. About the only thing Rebecca had in common with the previous winners was that it was adapted from a famous novel. Rebecca was the first film to be helmed by a British director to win Best Picture, and it certainly has a tone more typical of British productions than American ones. The film is undeniably dark, and it has Gothic sensibilities Tim Burton would envy. Hitchcock filled the film with all sorts of subtext about female identity and gender roles—themes he would return to again and again in his films—and the dialogue is laced with sarcasm and black humor. Nearly every film that won the Best Picture Oscar before upheld noble virtues, honesty and individualism (and even the most daring of the previous winners—All Quiet on the Western Front—doesn’t have a trace of irony and sarcasm). Most of the nominees following Rebecca would do the same for decades. Hitchcock’s picture is an Oscar anomaly, as it swims in malfeasance, lies and a lack of identity.

The story—adapted from Daphne du Marnier’s novel of the same name—centers on a nameless female protagonist (Joan Fontaine) and the widower she marries, Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). (* Forgive me for launching into an entertaining digression here on Joan Fontaine—she is the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland, and they had a lifelong feud. At age nine, de Havilland made-up a will that said “I hereby bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister Joan, since she has none.” When both sisters were up for the Oscar for Best Actress in 1941, Hitchcock directed Fontaine to an Oscar win in Suspicion. As Fontaine went to collect her Oscar, she brushed right by the extended hand of de Havilland. On the sisters, Hitchcock once mused that he’d love to see the sisters in a film together, if only for the entertainment value provided by their feud. But back to Rebecca…) Maxim lives in a grand old mansion—Manderley (another Selznick picture, another named house)—and he soon expects the new Mrs. de Winter to fill the role held by the late Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca. The head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), adored Rebecca to the point of obsession, and isn’t about to cede control of Manderley over to the new wife smoothly. Mrs. Danvers also kept many secrets for her former mistress, such as an affair with her “cousin” Jack (George Sanders, in an acidic role that is a prototype of the reptilian character he would perfect—and win a Supporting Actor Oscar for—in All About Eve as Addison de Witt a decade later), which precipitated the decline of the relationship between Maxim and Rebecca. Ultimately, Rebecca’s presence consumes the new Mrs. de Witt, and the young bride uncovers the many secrets hidden within Manderley’s walls.

Lack (and fear of) female identity is the central theme of the film. Though it isn’t incorrect to assume the lack of an identity for the Fontaine character (whose proper name is never revealed in the film, she is referred to as Mrs. de Winter or in the screenplay as simply “I”) is a device in which to have the viewer, in essence, assume the role, her subjugation is more reflective of Hitchcock’s attitudes toward women. Hitchcock is famous for creating memorable roles for actresses, yet those characters are often soulless, mistreated or a canvas on which men paint their obsessions. Joan Fontaine’s role—though perfectly acted—manages to be all three at once.

Maxim is clearly obsessed with her beauty. His reasons for marrying her involve admiration for her outside appearance. It quickly becomes clear that Maxim has little to no interest in actually knowing his new bride. Mrs. de Winter is mistreated by nearly everyone in the film—from the aristocratic widow who hires her as a travelling companion early in the film, to the staff at Manderley, and Maxim himself who lies about his true nature when Mrs. de Winter confronts him. Finally, is there anything more soulless than being a character without a name? I completely see the value in having the audience assume Mrs. de Winter’s role in the film—it’s quite suspenseful to be in the dark along with a protagonist, thus making us even more desperate to uncover the mysteries of the story—but the character is ultimately treated as if she were formless putty. She can assume no shape of her own; outside hands—usually a man’s—must create one for her. Mrs. de Winter is merely a prop for Hitchcock to toy with.

Many of Hitchcock’s women have makeovers within the film, and the makeover scene is most telling of the director’s attitude toward Mrs. de Winter. She manages to stage a costume ball at Manderley, and in an effort to please Maxim, Mrs. de Winter wears the dress of Caroline de Winter—an ancestor Rebecca previously dressed up as. Hitchcock implies that the only way Mrs. de Winter can have any sort of life is by imitating a ghost. When Maxim sees her, he is rejected—he knows that his new bride is no substitute for the old one. A ghost (two, if you really look at it) has more power and personality than a live person. At this point in the film, Mrs. de Winter is contemplating suicide (and basically encouraged to do so by Mrs. Danvers), but a twist in the plot keeps the story moving forward. The poor girl can’t even end her life on her own terms—she only exists to be manipulated by the story and the director who unfolds it.

Mrs. Danvers herself has her identity subjugated. Throughout the film, it is implied she is a lesbian (you can thank the Hays Code for not allowing any sort of mention of homosexuality to be overtly mentioned into films). In Rebecca’s most fantastically creepy scene, Mrs. Danvers gives Mrs. de Winter a tour of Manderley. The housekeeper has kept her mistresses bedroom completely intact as if it were a holy shrine. Mrs. Danvers especially fawns over Rebecca’s old undergarments and negligees, at one point holding them to her cheek. It is revealed that Rebecca even called Mrs. Danvers by a pet name, “Danny” (and I think it is also notable that Mrs. Danvers’ first name also remains unuttered), which is about as subtle as a piano being dropped from a skyscraper in implying a Sapphic relationship between the two women. Mrs. Danvers’ relationship with Rebecca is portrayed as an obsession and predatory in nature. Hitchcock shows the character not an iota of sympathy. Mrs. Danvers is the clear villain of the film, and her lesbianism (yeah, I’ll push Mrs. Danvers right on out of the closet) is made the source of her madness.

In Rebecca, women are feared. In many ways, the strongest female character in the film doesn’t occupy a single frame. Rebecca haunts the whole film (from the first line “Last night, I dreamt of Manderley…”) to the moment when her fate is revealed (I don’t mean to spoil it for you, but Rebecca dies under malicious circumstances at the hands of a man). The more we learn about Rebecca, the more we learn that she had a mind and a personality of her own—and one that frequently clashed with Maxim’s ideal—and feel free to substitute Hitchcock himself here—of what a wife is expected to be like. Is it any surprise that she is dead?

Fear of women by suppressing their identity shows up time and again in Hitchcock’s work—from the neglected girlfriend Grace Kelly plays in Rear Window, the tormented and objectified Kim Novak in Vertigo and the misguided independent Janet Leigh played in Psycho, who represents the point at which female heroines were given no guarantees to even make it to the ending of a movie. (Oh, and let’s not even mention the whole bevy of “mother” and gender issues raised in Psycho—that’s another blog entry for another time.) Hitchcock’s attitudes towards women undoubtedly led to a period of inspired and unparalleled creativity in filmmaking—and Rebecca is the launchpad for these obsessions—but is his attitude a healthy one?

In the end, we have the might of David O. Selznick to thank for immortalizing Rebecca with a Best Picture Oscar. Selznick provided the platform on which Hitchcock became established in Hollywood. It’s fair to say that without Rebecca, we never would have got the superlative output of films Hitchcock made in the 1950’s. And perhaps I’m being a little too harsh on the director. By all accounts he was a loving husband and father to a daughter. I do think his films offer a peek into his subconscious, and also reflect the darkness in our own.

In a decade that would be haunted by war, death and evil, the Best Picture winners of the 1940’s would each be a litmus test to the darkness man holds within. If the great theme of the 1930’s films was there’s no place like home, Rebecca suggests that home is no place one would want to be. Oscar rarely flirts so aggressively with the dark side, and while none of the films in honored in the decade would be as bleak, Rebecca is the first Best Picture winner to scrape beneath the surfaces of the simple morals of the previous decade to find only ash and decay.


DETAILS

Rebecca (1940)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson, George Sanders (and look out for Hitchcock’s signature cameo toward the end of the film near a phone booth after Sanders makes a call)

Studio: Selznick International Pictures (distributed by United Artists)

Total Oscars: 2 (Best Picture, Best Cinematography), out of 11 nominations (Best Director—Hitchcock, Best Actor—Olivier, Best Actress—Joan Fontaine, Best Supporting Actress—Judith Anderson, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction (Black & White), Best Editing, Best Score, Best Special Effects)

NEXT BLOG: How Green Was My Valley