The Lost Weekend

Plot synopsis:
Thursday - An alcoholic New York writer, Don Birnam (Ray Milland), is packing for a weekend vacation with his brother Wick (Philip Terry), who is trying to discourage his drinking. When Don’s girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) comes to see them off, she mentions in passing that she has two tickets for a concert, to which Don urges Wick to accompany her. Don heads for Nat’s Bar, deliberately missing his train, and then sneaks back into the flat to drink some cheap whisky he has bought, avoiding Helen who is worried about him being left alone.
Friday - Back at the bar, the owner, Nat (Howard Da Silva), criticizes Don for treating Helen so badly, and Don recalls how he first met her. It was due to a mix-up of cloakroom tickets at the opera-house, where he had to wait for the person who had been given his coat-check in error. This was Helen, with whom he strikes up a romance. When he is due to meet her parents for lunch at a hotel, he loses his nerve and phones a message to her, crying off. Presently he confesses to her that he is two people ‘Don the writer’, whose fear of failure causes him to drink, and ‘Don the drunk’ who always has to be bailed out by his brother. Still, Helen devotes herself to helping him in his plight. Back in the present day, Don has moved on to another bar, where he is caught stealing money from a woman's purse to pay his bill, and he is subsequently thrown out. In the flat, he finds a bottle he had stashed the previous night and drinks himself into a stupor.
Saturday - Don is broke and all the pawnshops are closed for Yom Kippur. At Nat’s Bar, he is refused service. In desperation for money, he visits a girl who has had a long held crush on him, but stood her up during this latest binge . Leaving her flat, he falls down the stairs and is knocked unconscious.
Sunday - Don wakes up in an alcoholics’ ward where 'Bim' Nolan (Frank Faylen), a cynical male nurse, mocks him and other guests at ‘Hangover Plaza’, but offers to help cure his delirium. Don refuses help, and succeeds in escaping from the ward while the staff are occupied with a violent patient.
Monday - Still broke, Don steals a bottle of whisky from a store, and spends the day drinking and hallucinating. Helen returns, alerted by a call from Don's landlady who can hear his screams. Finding him in a delirious state, she vows to look after him and spends the night on his couch.
Tuesday - Don slips out and pawns Helen’s coat - the thing which had first brought them together - in order to buy a gun. She trails him to the pawn shop and finds out from the pawnbroker that he traded the coat for a gun he had pawned earlier. She races to Don's apartment and catches him just before he is about to shoot himself in the bathroom. He tells her their relationship is over, and she glimpses the gun which he has hidden in the bathroom. As they struggle for control of the weapon, she reminds Don of her love for him, and her concern that he should stop drinking. She is able to convince him that ‘Don the writer’ and ‘Don the drunk’ are the same person. He finally commits to writing his novel The Bottle, dedicated to her, which will recount the events of the weekend. He drops a cigarette into a glass of whiskey to make it undrinkable, as proof that he is cured.

Tags: bleak, melodrama, realism, flashback

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