The Lost Weekend is probably the forties' most famous problem picture, and today loses little of its original power. Ray Milland's Don Birnam is a failed writer, an anxiety-prone weakling who uses alcohol as an escape. A number of short, episodic scenes mount gradually in intensity until the two climactic passages, which occur respectively in an alcoholic ward and at Birnam's apartment during a fit of delirium tremens. Other sequences convey Birnam's agony even better: his attempt to pawn his typewriter on Third Avenue on Yom Kippur; and, in particular, the scene in Harry and Joe's Bar, played and directed with exemplary delicacy and finesse, in which Birnam robs a girl's handbag, and is thrown out protesting ‘I'm not a thief!' Wilder has seldom used his camera more daringly. Telephones, overturned lampshades and, of course, bottles loom menacingly in the foreground of the compositions, while John F. Seitz's New York exteriors capture in drab grays and blacks a city stripped of glamour and allure. Holding it all together is Milland's admirable performance, conveying the character's softness, his voluptuous surrender to indulgence, to perfection.