Director: Billy Wilder.
Writers: Charles R. Jackson, Charles Brackett.
Stars: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry.    
Runtime: 101 minutes    

Plot: The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four day drinking bout.

Review: The stark and terrifying study of a dipsomaniac which Charles R. Jackson wrote so vividly and truly in his novel, "The Lost Weekend," has been brought to the screen with great fidelity in every respect but one: the reason for the "dipso's" gnawing mania is not fully and convincingly explained. In the novel, the basic frustration which drove the pitiable "hero" to drink was an unconscious indecision in his own masculine libido. In the film, the only cause given for his "illness" is the fact that he has writer's cramp. That is, he can't make himself accomplish a burning ambition to write.

However, this single shortcoming is a minor detraction, at worst, from a shatteringly realistic and morbidly fascinating film. For Paramount's ace brace of craftsmen, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, have done such a job with their pens and their cameras as puts all recent "horror" films to shame. They have also achieved in the process an illustration of a drunkard's misery that ranks with the best and most disturbing character studies ever put on the screen. "The Lost Weekend" is truly a chef d'oeuvre of motion-picture art.

Reviewed by Mohaiminul Islam