THE LOST WEEKEND. Been about five years since my last viewing, and that report has me ready to take it off the shelf. I’ve been wondering how those new Blu-rays are. Masters of Cinema just released that and DOUBLE INDEMNITY, both of them essential fixtures on the royal shelf. And this forces me to recount my favorite moment at a double feature in a theater. Stop me if you’ve heard this one:
In the late 1970s I went to a pairing of those two films – I want to say it was during a Warner Bros. festival at the Fine Arts on Wilshire (I always wish I’d saved the flyer from that one). Well, turns out you just HAVE to show them in this order -- probably for any number of reasons, but not only are they two of the greatest Wilder titles from the period, which play perfectly together -- there's a serendipitous moment near the beginning of DOUBLE that pays the bill.
As MacMurray is admitted into the house while Stanwyck is being fetched, the housekeeper tells him to wait in the living room, while warning (and I'm paraphrasing) that "they keep the liquor cabinet locked". Even though there had been a break between the two films, and WEEKEND ends on a bright enough note, etc., it was as though that line in the wisecracking second film relieved any lingering tension and mood from the first, and the audience erupted in the most spontaneous and appreciative explosion of laughter. Okay, not a huge deal, but it was a moment of pure movie-going bliss that will live forever in my movie-lovin' memory bank.
