I wasn’t too impressed with this week’s Best Picture winner, The Lost Weekend (1945, Paramount) until about the final 40 minutes or so. Then it got quite intense. Chronicling the extended weekend bender of an alcoholic with aspirations of being a successful writer, The Lost Weekend transgressed Hollywood’s accepted norms (at the time) by presenting its viewers with a frank, open look at the devastation caused by alcoholism, a major social issue of the film’s time (and of every other time period before and after since the first creation of liquor).

Don Birnam’s weekend plans: locking himself in his apartment with his liquor.

Its nontraditional subject matter and unorthodox manner of presenting it almost prevented The Lost Weekend from ever being released to general audiences. Preview audiences failed to react favorably to a movie with such a realistic portrayal of inebriation, and the alcohol industry even went so far as to offer to purchase the film’s negative, thereby eliminating the possibility of its circulation. The film’s creators and producers prevailed, though, and The Lost Weekend went on to great popular and commercial success. Nominated for seven Academy Awards (including Film Editing, Cinematography [Black-and-White], and Music [Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture]), the film won four Oscars: Directing, Writing (Screenplay), Actor for Ray Milland as Don Birnam, and Best Motion Picture.

What first struck me as odd about this film is its complete lack of reference to World War II. By the time of The Lost Weekend’s Los Angeles premiere on November 29, 1945, exactly a week after Thanksgiving, the world had born witness to events of such magnitude as: the liberation of Auschwitz, the U.S. Marines’ victory at Iwo Jima, the deaths of Nazi prisoner Anne Frank and fourth-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the executions of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, the suicides of German dictator Adolf Hitler and his wife of one day, the surrender of Germany, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the surrender of Japan, the establishment of the United Nations, and the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials—all in the space of less than a year.

There were other things going on in the world, of course. It is just surprising to me that The Lost Weekend seems insulated from its current events when its setting seems to be in the 1940s. And to me, the 1940s is all about World War II. It seems like there would be no way to get around that fact. In truth, it would appear that we of the twenty-first century are still trying to come to terms with the tragedy and triumph of World War II as evidenced by the steady stream of WWII films that has never once abated since the end of the war in 1945. The 1950s produced Best Picture winners From Here to Eternity and The Bridge on the River Kwai. The ‘60s saw the release of The Longest Day, The Dirty Dozen, and The Guns of Navarone. The year 1970 witnessed the success of both Tora!Tora!Tora! and BP winner Patton. The ‘80s gave us Empire of the Sun and The Big Red One. The 1990s churned out epics like Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, BP winner Schindler’s List, and Life is Beautiful (which introduced Oscar fans to the effervescent Roberto Benigni and produced some rather memorable Academy Awards moments). And, the 2000s have not disappointed with films such as Pearl Harbor, The Pianist, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, Inglourious Basterds, and Fury.

The nifty visual effect of the shadow of an alcohol bottle hovers over the film’s drunken and desperate protagonist.

While The Lost Weekend might not directly address World War II, its focus on alcoholism still indirectly relates to the war and its aftermath. As soldiers of the conflict returned home, all of them had to cope with the atrocities they had witnessed and the acts they had committed to promote freedom—and many of these veterans turned to the bottle in an attempt to fend off the nightmares and manage the transition back to “normal.” Such an honest, straightforward picture of alcohol dependency as The Lost Weekend provides promoted a more open discussion about personal struggles faced by men returning home from the front lines and paved the way for other films to address social issues that were often considered taboo (I think of how Best Picture winners One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and A Beautiful Mind challenge the way we perceive and treat the mentally ill). Hence, my initial puzzlement at this week’s film’s topic resolved itself into a contemplation of the post-war difficulties encountered by those who had been in the thick of the fighting—as well as by those who loved them and welcomed them home—which is perhaps what the film’s makers intended all along.

For more thoughts on The Lost Weekend and its significance, please check out the full post, um, this weekend!