The Lost Weekend

From its elegant, telling opening shot – a slow pan across the New York skyline ending at an open window with a bottle suspended on a rope below – it is obvious that The Lost Weekend (1945) is not going to be a worthy-but-dull social problem film about alchoholism. Billy Wilder's artful direction, along with a spooky, theremin-heavy soundtrack, takes us deep into the mind of the alcoholic. Ray Milland's sweatily convincing performance as 'the nice man who drinks' grips our attention, while Frank Faylen's role as Bim, a menacingly softly-spoken nurse in the alcoholic ward, is an object lesson in how even the briefest cameo can etch itself indelibly on the viewer's consciousness: "It's like the doctor was just telling me – delirium is a disease of the night. Good night." Just don't expect pink elephants, he warns: "That's the bunk. It's little animals! Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes." [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]