The Poison

the Poison ( The Lost Weekend ), sometimes entitled the Weekend lost , is a film American realized by Billy Wilder and left in 1945.

Synopsis

Don Birnam is an alcoholic of long time. Here are ten days that it did not touch with an alcohol drop, and it seems on the right track.

Arranging itself not to go to spend one weekend to the countryside with his brother and his boyfriend, it is only found for four days of cooked severe. He reconsiders with his past, often wasted by the bottle. This time, its descent into Hell will be its last, in a way or another.

Comment

The solitary and anonymous combat of an alcoholic in the indifference of a mégapole such could be the definition of Gift Birnam, writer in evil of inspiration, however supported by its promised in marriage Helene honest and present in the misfortune, which using Wick brother of Gift tries by all the means of helping this character sinking without resistance in a dreadful dependence.

The origins of the evil are occulted, completely poisoned Don accentuates and feeds its defect which he only saw and cloister during one weekend of nightmare which carries out it in hell. The stay of Gift at the hospital or he sees alcoholics anonymouses in full crises of delirium announces a test for this man who in his turn will be confronted with a terrible attack of hallucinations (that Jean-Pierre Melville will reproduce with identical in the red Circle ).

Solitary gift disaggregates, it does not take more care of him, the devastations of alcohol takes along it to fly, to extort. Soon définitvement with the foot of the wall, it hardly remains to him of choice: to be diluted definitively in its evil or to cease drinking.

A Deus ex machina in the shape of Nat, barman sympathetic nerve and understanding, will put at point named between the hands of Gift, before it makes the irrevocable one, an essential invaluable tool to awake its deadened creative imagination. A sudden will remakes surface, the character awakes and sets out again.

The authors treated the Alcoolisme without ornament, with all that comprises: the physical lack, the hallucinations, tricks not to betray itself, lies as well as the physical, moral and financial forfeiture (the barman refuses to be useful as long as the slate is not regulated) which accompanies it.

Data sheet

Distribution

Rewards

  • Oscar 1945: Better film
  • Oscar 1945: Better realizer for Billy Wilder
  • Oscar 1945: Better scenario for Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
  • Oscar 1945: Better actor in a first role for Ray Milland
  • Grand Prix of the Cannes festival 1946

Around film

  • the film, at its exit, was been sulky by a public undoubtedly rejected by its black realism.
  • the round of the pawnbrokers in New York was turned in real decorations.
  • not to confuse with: the Poison of Sacha Guitry with Michel Simon

External bonds

  • the Poison on Internet Movie Database
  • the New Yorkean decoration

Random links:Royal museum of old art in Brussels | Casti-Wergenstein | Ribeira Faced | Vescours | Castle of Vault-of-Bragny