The transition from journeyman screenwriter who worked primarily under the guidance of your artistic hero to one of the greatest filmmakers of all time is certainly not easy, but yet Billy Wilder managed to make it seem like the most enjoyable experience imaginable. It would be a challenge to find anyone who enjoyed his craft more than Wilder, who is perhaps one of Hollywood’s earliest examples of a pure auteur, his films often entailing the director taking on multiple roles in the production, which is clear even from his slightly earlier work, when he was still making his way through the industry as someone still making a name for himself, especially as an immigrant filmmaker. The Lost Weekend comes directly after arguably the director’s first significant success, Double Indemnity, and while it is not a film that can be considered the product of a novice to the industry (as Wilder had been around for quite a while, writing for people like Ernst Lubitsch, and inheriting his status as one of the greatest filmmakers of the Golden Age of Hollywood), but it was still a film made by someone finding his footing in the industry, with his previous films showcasing a director of radical talents. One of the qualities that made Wilder so incredible as a filmmaker is how he was never bound by genre, and that he could just as fast make an outrageous comedy as he could a sobering drama – and The Lost Weekend is certainly amongst the latter, and all the proof one needs that he possessed his distinctive range as a filmmaker from the very start of his career, with this being one of the most integral entries into his astonishing body of work, and amongst his greatest achievements.

Addiction has always been a subject that art has been invested in exploring. There is something incredibly compelling about a story that presents us with a character struggling with a particular vice, especially when they take a more straightforward approach to showing the effects that come when someone is dependent on a particular substance. The Lost Weekend is regularly cited as the greatest film on the subject of alcoholism ever produced (alongside a couple of others, with this one being seen as perhaps the most definitive), which is an enormous accomplishment, particularly for the time in which it was produced, which was not an era where making a film about the dangers of drinking was particularly promising by social and cultural standards. Alcoholism at the time was a challenging subject – the era of Prohibition had only recently been lifted just over a decade before, and the latter days of the Second World War distracted from the fact that many people found solace at the bottom of a bottle. Wilder and his creative partner Charles Brackett (with whom he collaborated on the screenplay) clearly draw from firsthand experience, with the popular theory being that they were inspired to write this project after Wilder’s collaboration with Raymond Chandler, a chronic alcoholic, which led him to see the darker side of alcohol addiction. Their approach is one that is distinctly complex and often quite difficult, since there is not an ounce of levity used in their methods of telling this story – they are forthright in how they tackle the subject matter, and they waste very little time on unnecessary conversations, steering the film in a more concise direction where there is very little room for overt sentimentality – and considering how he was going from a more lush, detailed kind of film, it’s remarkable how Wilder was able to produce something so bare, in terms of both form and content.

The film takes place over a single weekend, and follows one character as he does his best to fend off the desire to succumb to drinking the days away, since he is doing whatever it takes to recover from a recent bout (the details of which are never made clear, but they’re implied to be quite sinister), only to find himself left to his own devices, leading him to a few days of radical binge-drinking that almost costs him his life after he finds himself making increasingly poor decisions. The Long Weekend is essentially a one-man show, and the actor tasked with bringing the character to life was always going to have his work cut out for him. Mercifully, the incredible Ray Milland was cast, and he turns in one of the best performances of the era. The role of Don Birnam is one that not any actor could play (although many likely wish they had), since it requires someone that can play on both our sympathy and inherent disdain for people who cannot handle their addiction – normally, films tend towards one or the other. He needed to be both valiant and pathetic, admirable but pitiable, often at the exact same time. Milland was the kind of classically trained actor who had the self-awareness to abandon the more precise techniques of his craft, and just get to the point where he is inhabiting every aspect of the character, which can be quite a terrifying experience for the viewer, since Milland is extraordinary, especially in the moments where the character is at his lowest. The Lost Weekend has other actors (such as Jane Wyman and Howard Da Silva), but this film depends almost entirely on Milland, who is simply astonishing in taking on this unsettling portrait of a man teetering so close to the edge of sanity, and where his only means to survive seem to be found in the various dive bars and liquor stores that he frequents – and this is not only a testament to Milland as an actor, but also Wilder as a writer and director capable of giving his actors incredible roles.

Prior to The Lost Weekend, the majority of films on the subject of addiction were along the lines of Reefer Madness, which served as scathing indictments on the use of a particular substance, made by filmmakers who were less invested in exploring the lives of the people who struggled with addiction, and more focused on showing the dangers through the lens of puritanical and conservative values. When you combine the fact that Wilder and Brackett approached the subject of alcoholism from a more sensitive place, and cast an actor who would not overplay the dramatic scenes, you find a seismic shift in how these stories are told. Those who suffered from this dreadful addiction were not the subject of antagonism any longer, instead now being shown as individuals who fall victim to a manipulative condition that causes them to suffer considerably. The film doesn’t treat these people like they’re engaging in anything beyond their control, but it also outright refuses to make them out to be villains of their own story, with whatever temptation there was to reconfigure these people as worthy of scorn being openly avoided. The Lost Weekend is a work of complete compassion – Wilder and Brackett were not interested in creating a film in which the audience was encouraged to gawk at someone suffering from addiction, their focus instead being on showing the most bleak realities associated with the condition, and exploring it in a way that allows us to feel empathy, but never in a way that feels inauthentic. There’s a level of detail to the film that keeps it compelling – at only 100 minutes, it is a remarkably concise film, with very little space for unnecessary details, and it moves along at a steady pace, switching between the harsh realities and wild delusions that many addicts tend to experience.

Few would ever have the courage to call The Lost Weekend the best film Wilder ever made – but this is not an implication that this is anywhere close to a bad film, but rather yet another remarkable entry into a career that spans multiple decades, and saw numerous fascinating stories told. This is amongst the director’s most bleak films, but also the one with the most significant amount of hope – considering we know that it was based on the novel by Charles Jackson, a recovering alcoholic himself, the story of a writer struggling with his addiction has layers of metafictional commentary that a less-gifted director may have struggled to fully capture, especially since this is not a narrative that necessarily lends itself to massive amounts of exposition, much of the experience depending on the viewer’s ability to fill in the gaps between moments. It’s not a film that is particularly comfortable, but there’s a sense of optimism that allows any of us who have experience with the condition – whether directly or through having our lives impacted by someone who suffers from any form of addiction – to know that there is always a way forward, and that regardless of how difficult it may seem, recovery is possible. The Lost Weekend is a stunning film, a tightly-composed, deeply meaningful meditation on living with an invisible condition that still remains controversial due to how avoidable it apparently is – and whether or not we find ourselves agreeing with how the film handles the material, it’s impossible to deny the raw power simmering beneath the surface, especially in those moments of disquieting complexity, which are amongst the most effective in Wilder’s entire career, and one of the many reasons behind this being an outright masterpiece, and one of the more effective social message films of its era.