Drama
1945

Director: Billy Wilder Cast: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen, Mary Young, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Lilian Fontaine, Frank Orth, Lewis L. Russell

Academy Awards: Best Picture; Best Actor in a Leading Role (Ray Milland); Best Director (Billy Wilder); Best Screenplay (Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder)

Also Nominated For: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Film Editing; Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture

I First Saw In: 2015

Synopsis: The desperate life of an alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout.

Did You Know? It wasn’t until years later that Billy Wilder discovered that the title of Charles R. Jackson’s novel is actually a type. It was supposed to have been called The Last Weekend.

And now a Word from the Guise:
It’s really too bad that I can’t take a theremin seriously without thinking of cheesy 1950’s sci-fi, because this is truly an incredible film that transcends its own time. Ray Milland expertly captures the frenetic desperation of a dipsomaniac. But there’s a darkness in the film that is neither alcoholism nor mental illness, but rather the societal taboo of these conditions: the ridicule and condescension that people who suffer from them must face and how they are medically treated.

Oscar Madness Ranking – ??? out of 233