Directed by Billy Wilder (1945)
by Shane Collis

"At night this stuff's a drink, in the morning it's medicine." - Don Birnam

From the first strains of Miklós Rózsa's score, it is obvious that the film we are about to see is no comedy. Directed by the great Billy Wilder, following his archetypal film noir masterpiece Double Indemnity. Based on the novel by Charles Jackson, The Lost Weekend offers little in the way of comic relief as it charts a debauched four days in the life of aspiring New York writer Don Birnam (a superb Ray Milland).