Billy Wilder’s 1945 drama “the Lost Weekend” is not just a film but rather a cultural symptom of nationwide ambience of the post war disillusionment that suddenly demanded a penetration of a more critical gaze into the American society in order to search for a grittier and murkier reality.

The plot of the film revolves around an unsuccessful author played by Ray Milland in his Oscar winning performance, and his on and off associations with alcoholism. The sense of failure, futility, depression and the desperate attempts against the overarching notion of cynicism are some of the key elements that really build the film into a classic text. Even the viewer position tends to get uncomfortable in the process as the film rolls over an intense gaze on to this lurid nightmare of misery and gloom and goes on relentlessly not allowing anyone to stir from it.

The film has always been considered to a technical masterpiece for a number of reasons. To begin with the marvelous use of the black and white noir-ish photography tends to transfer the ambience of into a almost tactile entity on the surface of the film. Equally effective is the use of the haunting background score by Miklós Rózsa to create a mood parallel to the brooding sense of paranoia blended with pathos as Milland descends deeper down the abyss. Finally, it is Wilder’s supreme command over the medium that enables the film to reach out to everyone while maintaining the grit and cynicism.