Well, dear readers, I come to praise Mr. Billy Wilder and his film The Lost Weekend. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, I, BK, come to praise Mr. Billy Wilder and his film The Lost Weekend. I recently acquired the UK Blu and Ray of this title and last night I watched it. To say they don’t know how to make movies like this anymore would be a gross understatement. In fact, if they remade it today I can tell you there would be vomiting. There is no vomiting in Billy Wilder’s film of The Lost Weekend, despite it begin about an alcoholic and a horrible weekend bender. What is brilliant about this film is that it manages to present its story in a way that is potent, terrifying, and yet also funny and charming, with biting wit, great little directorial business for the actors, and above all one memorable line of dialogue after another. Today, you wouldn’t even be able to understand a word anyone was saying. Mr. Wilder is never given enough credit as a director – he’s a wonderful visual stylist and knows exactly how to best tell his story for the camera. Right from the opening shot you know you’re in the hands of a master, because the hero’s deal is presented in one long and terrific shot. Mr. Wilder, unlike most directors today, is not a show off. He’s a storyteller. He doesn’t want someone sitting in the audience thinking, “Wow, look at that amazing tracking shot, look at that amazing effect.” He wants to draw you into his film, into the world, into the characters, and this he does as well as any writer/director in history. And then there are the actors – Ray Milland giving the performance of his career, Jane Wyman, so lovable and sweet and wonderful, the beautiful and moving turn by Howard Da Silva as the bartender, the gorgeous and terrific Doris Dowling as a bar girl named Gloria, who likes Milland, right down to the one-scene chilling performance of Frank Faylen as the nurse in the alcoholic ward.
There are so many great scenes in the film. The great sequence when Milland is in a club drinking and realizes he doesn’t have enough dough to pay for his drinks and he steals the purse of the woman sitting next to him. That little sequence is so beautifully directed and Milland is just so right when he comes back from the bathroom, having removed ten dollars from the purse (replacing it with a carnation) only to find everyone staring at him, and then having to admit to the theft. It’s just a perfect scene. And the heartbreaking scene where, after standing Doris Dowling up, he goes to her apartment to see if she’ll give him money. There occurs my favorite dialogue in the whole film. She says, “You do like me just a little, don’t you?” and he replies, in one of the film’s most famous lines, “Natch, Gloria, natch.” But the film is filled with quotable lines, like Gloria’s recurring, “Don’t be ridic” and bartender Nat’s, “One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough” or Bim, the male nurse’s line, “Delirium is a disease of the night,” or Milland’s incredible speech about how his mind is freed when he’s drunk, “But what it does to the mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I’m above the ordinary. I’m competent. I’m walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I’m one of the great ones. I’m Michelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I’m Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I’m Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I’m John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I’m Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I’m W. Shakespeare. And out there it’s not Third Avenue any longer, it’s the Nile. Nat, it’s the Nile and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra.” And on and on, especially the sequence when he walks down Third Avenue trying to pawn his typewriter and finding all the pawn shops closed because it’s a Jewish holiday, or the classic scene where he experiences the delirium of the night. At exactly 100 minutes, the film never overstays its welcome. The transfer is erratic, but it’s decent-looking most of the time and it does look a bit better than the DVD. If for whatever reasons you’ve never seen this film all I can say is that it gets my highest recommendation (most Billy Wilder films do) and you need to watch it immediately. Natch, Gloria, natch.
Prior to watching The Lost Weekend, for some reason I awoke at six in the morning, which was so irritating. I think I finally fell back asleep at around eight, and then I was awakened by the doorbell. I had a visitor, but I literally have no memory of what we talked about (it was brief), I just remember feeling so groggy and incoherent. After that, I answered e-mails, and then I met Alet Taylor for an early lunch. She moves to New York this week and I will miss her something awful. Thankfully, I’ll be back there in late August so we’ll be able to sup then. After that, I picked up a couple of packages, did some errands and whatnot, the helper came over and did the last shipping we’ll do until she returns next Tuesday. Then I finessed the Follies liner notes (well, a lot more than finessed) and I sent them off to the designer along with all the credits and information for the inlay card. Then I finally made my graph for all the projects we’re working on – there are nine that we’ll be finishing in the next few weeks, then an additional five that we’ll dive right into. These titles will take us right through to the New Year. Then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
After The Lost Weekend, I watched another Beck movie, this one called Stockholm Marathon. I haven’t loved any of the Beck movies as much as the very first one, Roseanna, but this one was just as good (it was made directly after). In reading about the book from which it was adapted, they seem to have left out two of the three plots that intertwine, choosing to concentrate on just the one, which works fine.
After that, I had the extreme pleasure of hearing three more of our new Follies mixes – Don’t Look at Me, Waiting for the Girls Upstairs, and Ah, Paris/Broadway Baby. Some nits to pick, but it’s so clean and crisp. I listen to the original then our new one and it’s just so much smoother – the original has things bumped in the mix where you can just hear them pushing the fader up quickly and it’s always bothered me. And in Don’t Look at Me, in the last forty seconds of the songs, there’s weird tom toms and high-hat that are so loud and obtrusive, my ear has always gone to that instead of the vocal. My engineer put them way in the back so you barely hear it, and boy is it better. Funnily, I then listened to the new revival recording of that song and there are no toms or high-hat anywhere at that point. So, I think we did the right thing. Waiting for the Girls Upstairs is a little bit of thrilling, I have to say – every lyric crisp as can be. Not having the vocals hard panned left and right is majorly helpful, too. Can’t wait to hear more. Hoping by Thursday or Friday that I’ll be going over to finesse these.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I really need my beauty sleep.
Today, I shall endeavor to write another set of liner notes, do errands and whatnot, hopefully pick up some packages, eat something light but amusing and then continue on with all the packaging needs of all our projects.
Tomorrow is, of course, July 4th, and I’ve been invited to a partay. It’s a bit of a slog to get there (about an hour’s drive) but I think I’ll mosey on over there for a nice afternoon. The rest of the week is liner notes, meetings, meals, and hopefully finishing up the Follies mixes.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write more liner notes, do errands and whatnot, hopefully pick up some packages, eat, and do more work on Kritzerland projects. Today’s topic of discussion: We’ve decided on the Bacharach show, so what songs would you choose for us to do? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland where I shall fall asleep saying, “Natch, Gloria, natch.”