Word: birnam
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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That it has been made into a picture, and into one of the best with in recent memory, is largely the work of three men; Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, who adapted the novel of the screen, and Ray Milland, who plays the part of the hero, Don Birnam. Wilder, whose handling of "Double Indemnity" began the current wave of violent, tough guy films, also directed "Weekend...
...unemployed writer, Don Birnam (Ray Milland) tricks his girl and his brother into leaving him alone in a Manhattan apartment for a long weekend of solitary drinking. His brother, who supports him and knows his drinking habits, has left him no money, no whiskey and no credit with any neighborhood bar or liquor store. Milland, a gentlemanly alcoholic given to reciting from Shakespeare in cultured tones, leaves his dim, disordered room only to cadge money or drinks to get him through his marathon bender...
...Birnam were more purely comic he would be Mr. Toad; if he were more purely tragic he would be Hamlet...
...sense, every novel creates a little world of its own. In that sense The Lost Weekend is a world inhabited by only one soul, and that one damned. The story tells of five days in the life of Don Birnam, a clever coward who is drinking himself to death...
...part; various people from whom he "borrows" money he will never repay, with whom he makes dates he never keeps or from whom he buys the liquor that is alternately his salvation, his personal devil and his end-all − all these people are seen only from Don Birnam's view; they are important only in so far as they reflect his situation or supply the background for his lyrical ad ventures...