The lost weekend
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The lost weekend |
| Original title | The Lost Weekend |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1945 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Billy Wilder |
| script |
Charles Brackett , Billy Wilder |
| production | Charles Brackett |
| music |
Miklós Rózsa , Giuseppe Verdi |
| camera | John F. Seitz |
| cut | Doane Harrison |
| occupation | |
| |
The lost weekend (original title: The Lost Weekend) is an American film by Billy Wilder from 1945 based on the original novel of the same name (English title: Five days) by Charles R. Jackson . The black and white alcoholic drama starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman won four Academy Awards, including one for best picture. The film is still considered to be one of the leading ones on the subject of addiction, and it shaped the style of later films of this kind.
action
Don Birnam is an unsuccessful writer and long-time alcoholic in New York . Only his brother Wick, who also has to support him financially, and his girlfriend Helen occasionally manage to "dry him out" for a while. To recover from his last crash, Wick persuaded his brother Don to spend a weekend in the country together. But shortly before leaving, Don manages to send Wick and Helen out of his apartment under a pretext. While his brother takes the train to the country in frustration, Don is already back in Nat's Bar and spends the following weekend alone in New York. The bar owner Nat rebukes him for his behavior towards Helen, whereupon Don remembers the hopeful beginning of his relationship with Helen in flashbacks. He met her while waiting in the opera dressing room for a coat that had been mixed up. In his opinion, there are two people in him: the writer Don, who can only write under alcohol (originally he only wanted to overcome writer's block ), and Don the drunk, who can only get through life with the help of his fellow men and the alcohol has expired.
The film vividly shows the various stages of humiliation of an alcoholic on his desperate search for the next drink. Don is thrown out of pubs because he cannot pay his bills or even the landlord is of the opinion that he drinks too much and is therefore not served. He ravages his apartment because he cannot remember where he left a whiskey bottle the night before . Nor does he shrink from stealing and begging. After all, he even has hallucinations.
After a serious crash, Don is admitted to the alcoholic department of a hospital. Shaken by the nightly agony of another patient, he secretly flees back to his apartment, only to suffer the horror visions of delirium tremens caused by the withdrawal . In this state, Helen finds her lover the next morning, who has exchanged her coat - through which they once met at the cloakroom - for a weapon and wants to kill himself with it. Helen can just barely stop him from killing himself. She manages to encourage Don to write again, and she convinces him that the writer Don and the alcoholic Don are the same person. As a sign of his will, he sticks a cigarette into a glass of whiskey so that it is not drinkable. He is also planning to publish a book about his experiences as an alcoholic under the title "The Bottle". Whether he can overcome his addiction remains open.
backgrounds
The in many parts autobiographical book The Lost Weekend by alcoholic Charles R. Jackson was published in 1944 and became a sales success. Director Billy Wilder read the novel on the train; At the end of a train ride from Chicago to Los Angeles, he claims to have decided to turn Jackson's original into a film. The film largely follows the book; one of the writer's homosexual affairs mentioned there, however, was not allowed to appear in the film due to the requirements of the Hays Code .
Wilder originally wanted to cast the leading role with the then little-known José Ferrer . However, the studio management was able to convince their director to hire a crowd favorite in Ray Milland , with whom the audience can identify. But Milland didn't want the role at first; his advisors warned that the role of a seedy alcoholic could mean the end of his career. He was also unsure whether he would even be able to play the difficult role convincingly, as he had previously only played roles from the easy subject in romantic comedies and adventure films. However, Milland changed his mind about the project and prepared intensively for the role, for example by spending a night in a clinic for alcoholics. While Doris Dowling got the first important role of her career as a prostitute, the almost 60-year-old Lillian Fontaine - the mother of stars Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine - made her film debut as the mother of Helen. On the set, Wilder also met an extra named Audrey Young , who became his second wife in 1949.
The exterior shots were shot in New York and the interior shots in Hollywood . A true-to-scale replica of PJ Clarke's Third Avenue bar was specially built for this purpose . The Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan , founded in 1736 and America's oldest public hospital, served as the backdrop for the clinic . Wilder later claimed the alcohol industry offered Paramount $ 5 million in case the film didn't come out. At the same time, however, Paramount was also pressured by representatives of the abstinence movement not to bring the film out because they feared it would encourage people to drink. The Lost Weekend is considered to be one of the first films to address the issue in a serious way; Until then, alcoholism only appeared on the fringes of films or was made fun of by comic characters (so-called comic drunks) . It was also the first film to use the theremin musical instrument in its soundtrack , which has a strangely wailing sound and was later common in science fiction films of the 1950s. Miklós Rózsa used it in his compositions for the nightmare sequences. The image of Milland walking towards the camera while the neon lights drift past him also became famous and style-defining. This effect was copied countless times in later film history.
When the film failed a test screening, the production company Paramount hesitated to release it. It was feared that the film was too dark for a large audience and that the subject was too serious. This opinion was supported by preliminary reviews such as Variety magazine , who praised the film exuberantly, but also mentioned that it was only partially entertaining in the classic sense. However, the producers' fears were not confirmed at the box office. With a budget of $ 1.25 million, the film ended up taking in the impressive sum of $ 11 million.
Although it is not a crime film, The Lost Weekend is now often assigned to film noir , mainly because of its pessimistic attitude, the antihero as the main character and the strong contrasts between light and dark.
synchronization
There are two different German dubbed versions of the film . The first was made in 1948 in the Tempelhof film studio in Berlin-Tempelhof . For dialogue book and -regie recorded CW Burg responsible. The second version was made by ZDF in 1964 and has been shown ever since.
| role | actor | Voice actor (version 1948) | Voice actor (version 1964) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Don Birnam | Ray Milland | Paul Klinger | Harald Leipnitz |
| Helen St. James | Jane Wyman | Gudrun Genest | ?? |
| Wick Birnam | Phillip Terry | Axel Monjé | Niels Clausnitzer |
| Gloria | Doris Dowling | Berta Spanier | Sabine Eggerth |
| Nat, barman | Howard Da Silva | ?? | Alf Marholm |
| Mr. Brophy | Eddie Laughton | ?? | Jürgen Scheller |
| Charles St. James | Lewis L. Russell | ?? | Erik Jelde |
| pawnbroker | Lester Sharpe | ?? | Herbert Weicker |
| Clinic attendant | Lee Shumway | ?? | Wolfgang Hess |
Awards
- 1946 Oscar for best actor to Ray Milland
- 1946 Oscar for best picture to Charles Brackett (producer)
- 1946 Oscar for Best Screenplay to Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
- 1946 Oscar for best director to Billy Wilder
Golden Globe Award 1946
- 1946 Golden Globe for best film (drama)
- 1946 Golden Globe for Best Actor to Ray Milland
- 1946 Golden Globe for Best Director to Billy Wilder
National Board of Review , USA
- 1945 NBR Award for Best Actor to Ray Milland
New York Film Critics Circle Awards , USA
- 1946 NYFCC Award for Best Actor to Ray Milland
- 1946 NYFCC Award for Best Director to Billy Wilder
- 1946 NYFCC Award for Best Picture
Cannes International Film Festival 1946
- 1946 for Best Actor to Ray Milland
- 1946 Grand Prix to Billy Wilder
- 2011 admission to the National Film Registry
Reviews
The Lost Weekend received excellent reviews when it was released. The film magazine Variety , for example, wrote in August 1945: “The film adaptation of Paramount of The Lost Weekend means a particularly outstanding triumph in Hollywood surroundings. It's an alcoholic's psychiatric study, an unusual film. It's intense, morbid - and exciting. Here's an intelligent dissection on one of society's most rampant sins. ” Bosley Crowther of the New York Times described The Lost Weekend of December 1945 as a“ staggeringly realistic ”and“ morbidly intriguing ”film that Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett had brilliantly on the script Job done, one of the film's greatest strengths is its honesty. It is one of the best and most disturbing character studies that has ever been brought to the screen. Crowther especially praised Ray Milland, who perfectly captures the bad drinking nature, but the other actors are also without exception convincing. It is not a film for a happy evening, but every adult should definitely watch the film.
Even today, the film is still highly praised, for example, all 32 reviews of the film on the American critic portal Rotten Tomatoes are positive, which means a rating of 100%. The impact of Billy Wilder's resolute honesty on the effects of alcohol may have been dulled a little by time, but it remains a powerful and remarkably forward-looking film, Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus said. The lexicon of international films saw the film as “an alcoholics study designed with great urgency, atmospherically dense, convincing, uncompromisingly realistic.” The Lexicon Films on TV by Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz wrote in 1990 that it was an “unusually honest and a realistic Hollywood film about an alcoholic and his suicidal fight against drugs ” (rating: 3 out of 4 possible stars = very good) . Schultz and Heinzlmeier particularly emphasized the haunting presentation and the uncompromising staging of "Old Master Wilder". Cinema noted that The Lost Weekend was still considered the definitive film on alcohol addiction and was the great, harrowing "role model of all problem films ".
DVD release
- The lost weekend. Oscar edition . Universal 2006
Soundtrack
- Miklós Rózsa : The Lost Weekend. Symphonic Suite, Part I & II . In: ibid .: The Lost Weekend · Blood On the Sun . Tsunami / 1st Floor, s. l., s. a., sound carrier no. TSU 0132 - Monophonic recording of the film music under the direction of the composer
literature
- Charles Jackson: Five Days (Original Title: The Lost Weekend ). Toth, Hamburg 1951
- Hans-Jürgen Kubiak: The Oscar Films. The best films from 1927/28 to 2004. The best non-English language films from 1947 to 2004. The best animated films from 2001 to 2004 . Schüren, Marburg 2005, ISBN 3-89472-386-6
- Mark Connelly: Deadly closets: the fiction of Charles Jackson , Lanham [u. a.]: Univ. Press of America, 2001, ISBN 978-0-7618-1912-7
Web links
- The Lost Weekend in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The lost weekend in the German dubbing files (dubbed version 1948)
- The lost weekend in the German dubbing file (dubbed version 1964)
Individual evidence
- ↑ "The lost weekend at Cinema
- ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037884/trivia
- ↑ Billy Wilder - A close-up of Hellmuth Karasek, Hamburg 1992, p. 286
- ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037884/trivia
- ↑ Trivia for The Lost Weekend , Internet Movie Database, accessed August 22, 2010
- ↑ Trivia for The Lost Weekend , Internet Movie Database, accessed August 22, 2010
- ^ Cultural References: The Lost Weekend
- ↑ http://variety.com/1945/film/reviews/the-lost-weekend-2-1200414610/
- ^ Box Office from The Lost Weekend
- ↑ Thomas Bräutigam : Lexicon of film and television synchronization. More than 2000 films and series with their German voice actors etc. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-289-X , p. 382
- ^ The lost weekend (new) , entry in Arne Kaul's synchronous database; Retrieved on October 10, 2007 ( Memento of the original from May 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The lost weekend in the German dubbing file
- ↑ http://variety.com/1945/film/reviews/the-lost-weekend-2-1200414610/
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9402E6DA163FE533A25750C0A9649D946493D6CF&partner=Rotten%2520Tomatoes
- ↑ "The Lost Weekend" at Rotten Tomatoes
- ↑ The lost weekend. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 6, 2016 .
- ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier, Berndt Schulz: Lexicon "Films on TV" . Extended new edition. Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 877
- ↑ "The lost weekend at Cinema
