More than 70 years after its initial release, the movie still mesmerises the audience with its performances, painting probably the most heartfelt and realistic picture of someone battling an alcohol addiction.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 26, 2024

Billy Wilder shows why he is one of the all-time great directors and screenwriters with one intense and desperate moment after the next. Filled with acerbic and biting dialogue, Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett’s script is among the best of its time.

| Jun 27, 2023

It displays with pitiless realism the humiliation, the degradation and the horror experienced by an alcoholic.

| Aug 18, 2022

Mr. Jackson's novel is not a masterpiece, but it is a brilliant experiment; and the team of Brackett and Wilder, co-writers and respectively, producer and director, have made of it a film which is often brilliant.

| Aug 8, 2022

The whole thing is short on imaginative resonance; what it has is the Brackett-and-Wilder specialty -- a distinctive cruel (and sometimes cruelly funny) edge.

| Jul 28, 2022

As a subject for discussion, it's the film of the year. It is cinematically speaking, a brilliant achievement, with two sequences standing out as high points of film horror, on a strict realistic basis.

| Feb 3, 2022

Worthwhile films are many. Merely passable ones too many. But extraordinarily fine films produced in a year can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Lost Weekend would take up three fingers In any given annum. It's that good.

| Feb 3, 2022

Something rare and wonderful happened when they made this picture. It's extraordinary, to say the least, when Hollywood drops its rose colored glasses for honest story treatment. It's the first time that Hollywood ever produced a drunk who isn't funny.

| Feb 3, 2022

The Lost Week End is magnificent melodrama, a serious study into a disease which too often is delineated in ridiculous guise, and an absorbing attempt to show the misery of drink.

| Feb 3, 2022

If Ray Milland doesn't get the Academy Award for his work in The Lost Week-end it will be a miscarriage of justice.

| Feb 3, 2022

Jane Wyman, who plays Don's troubled sweetheart, is a revelation in her first dramatic role after her unbroken succession of featherweight comedy parts.

| Feb 3, 2022

[Ray Milland] has imbued the very soul of the agonized man and in his portrayal Milland hits his peak. This is by far his best performance to date and one by which he’ll undoubtedly measure his future roles.

| Original Score: 2/3 | Feb 3, 2022

Much credit is due the Wilder-Brackett team for their skillful handling of the drama. There is sledge-hammer directness and ugly simplicity that make it outstanding.

| Feb 3, 2022

From an artistic point of view, this drama is impressive, for the direction and the acting are of the highest order. But it is hardly the type of entertainment that motion picture-goers want to see today, for it is grim and depressing.

| Feb 1, 2022

In the book, words slip into crevices too small for the camera to enter. Words describe aspects and nuances of the human mind that are too minute for the broader medium of movies. Nevertheless the result is a good brave try, surprisingly achieved.

| Feb 1, 2022

It is frank; it is well made; it is uncompromising, in the sense that it holds that a drunkard's dream is a sufficient theme for dramatists. But to my taste it is just dull.

| Feb 1, 2022

No artist has ever done with brush and oils what Mr. Billy Wilder, the director, does with his camera in The Lost Weekend. His three-dimensional portrait of Don Birman seems to multiply the three dimensions by several more.

| Feb 1, 2022

The Lost Weekend has power, suspense, intelligence and a performance by Ray Milland which unquestionably will rate him serious consideration for the 1945 Academy award.

| Feb 1, 2022

Too often, a film critic finds it necessary to scold, condemn, belittle and decry pictures made in the United States. It is a rare and deep pleasure to be able to say, as in this instance. "Well done, Hollywood."

| Feb 1, 2022

Too much can't be said for Mr. Milland's performance. Seldom has the screen seen anything comparable.

| Feb 1, 2022