The Lost Weekend (film) - Plot

Plot

The film recounts the life of an alcoholic New York writer, Don Birnam, over the last half of a six year period, and in particular on a weekend alcoholic binge.

A shot of the Manhattan skyline to an apartment, with a whiskey bottle hung outside a window by a thin rope. Don and his brother Wick are packing for a weekend vacation. Wick believes that Don, a recovering alcoholic, has been on the wagon for ten days. After Don's girlfriend Helen St. James arrives to wish them bon voyage, she lets it slip that she has two tickets to a Barbirolli concert, but is going alone. Don urges his brother to go with her and says they'll take a later train for their weekend trip. Wick, having disposed of his brother's hidden supply of drink, becomes suspicious of why he is being hustled out. Don angrily demands time to gather his thoughts alone. Wick reluctantly agrees to go and reassures Helen he has found Don's hidden supply of alcohol and points out Don is broke. After they leave, Don frantically tries to find alcohol he has hidden. The cleaning lady arrives for work, but Don cons her out of her wages and sends her away.

Don takes the money he swindled to Nat's Bar on Third Avenue, based on the legendary P. J. Clarke's, and gets drunk, missing the train he is meant to catch. Wick, effectively rejecting his brother, intends to leave without him, though Helen is wary of leaving Don alone for four days. She is very busy with her work at Time magazine. As Wick is leaving the building, he urges Helen to give herself a chance by dropping Don. Helen waits. Don sneaks into his apartment to avoid her so he can drink. He quickly hides the cheap whiskey he has bought, in addition to the many drinks at the bar. The following morning he finds a message from Helen pinned to his front door, urging him to call her.

Later at the bar, owner Nat voices his distaste for how Don treats Helen and another girl who hangs out at the bar. Don recounts to Nat how he met Helen three years earlier at the Metropolitan Opera after a matinee performance of La Traviata. As he is checking his coat, he slides a pint of rye in his raincoat pocket. During the performance, he becomes agitated during "Libiamo ne' lieti calici", the "drinking song" in the first act. He cannot think of anything but the alcohol in the hands of the players and the bottle of rye in his pocket. He abruptly leaves the performance, and upon collecting his coat is presented with a woman's leopardskin coat. He becomes irritated that he can't get his own coat and is forced to wait until the only person remaining in the area, is the woman with his hat and coat. He is incredibly rude to her, but he makes a quick recovery with his manners and she invites him to a party. He declines, but as shifts his coat off his arm, the flask falls out of his pocket and smashes on the sidewalk. He tells a lie that it's for a friend, and asks if he can still go along to the cocktail party. He tells the bartender he chose not to drink that night... for her.

Their relationship becomes serious. One day he is due to meet Helen's parents, visiting from Toledo, Ohio, whom he overhears discussing his character flaws in the hotel lobby. Overpowered by anxiety, he escapes into the phone booth as Helen arrives and, while clandestinely observing her, calls and asks her to go ahead with lunch without him. This incident caused his return to drinking. Later, after Wick attempts to cover for Don's absence by telling Helen that Don is in Philadelphia, Don emerges from hiding and confesses his alcohol problem to Helen. He recognizes himself as two people: 'Don the writer' and 'Don the drunk', who is dependent on his brother. Don explains that he dropped out of college, identified earlier as Cornell, because he was convinced he was already a Hemingway, a "great writer." As he began to doubt his writing talent, he found solace in drink. Don says he can only develop writing ideas while drunk, but he forgets them when sober. Don suggests Helen drop him, but his words only strengthen Helen's resolve to help Don.

The story returns to the present. Don cannot find a hidden bottle of whiskey, but discovers the name of a bar he has not visited before on a pack of matches. In order to pay his bill at Harry & Joe's, he steals a woman's handbag, takes it into the men's room, and manages to extract enough money to pay his bill. The woman, though, has recognized the theft, and he is identified as the culprit. He admits he has taken her money. The woman takes pity on him in his drunken state and does not press charges. He is told not to return and thrown out.

The next day, Saturday, Don's phone rings repeatedly. Don supposes it is Helen, but ignores it. Later, he tries and fails to pawn his typewriter, since all the Third Avenue pawnshops are closed because of Yom Kippur. Returning exhausted to the bar, Nat refuses to serve him. Don visits Gloria, another habitué of Nat's Bar, whom he had half-seriously propositioned at the bar and who has admitted being attracted to him. She is now angry over the dates he has broken with her, but after he kisses her in desperation, she yields and hands over a little money. He then falls down the stairs and is knocked unconscious. Coming around in the alcoholics' ward of a hospital on Sunday, he is confronted by 'Bim' Nolan who mockingly recounts the histories of other patients at "Hangover Plaza." Bim allows that admissions to the ward were more numerous during prohibition and offers Don a solution to counteract the effects of the DTs, which Don refuses. During the night, on his second attempt and wearing a stolen coat over his pajamas, Don succeeds in escaping from the ward while the staff are occupied with a more disturbed and violent patient.

Meanwhile, Helen sleeps on the stairs outside his apartment. Don always ignores his milk and newspaper deliveries. When the milkman arrives, he is careful not to wake her. However, Helen is awoken by Don's landlady. She assumes Don is on one of his benders and tells Helen she would be better off if he were dead. Elsewhere, as a liquor store is opening for the day, Don snatches a cheap bottle of whiskey from an assistant clerk. He returns home and ignores the ringing phone. Later, while inebriated, he imagines a mouse appearing out of a crack in the wall and a bat flying around his living room. The bat attacks the mouse. Bim had explained earlier that alcoholics usually imagine seeing small animals rather than "pink elephants." Helen returns, alerted by a call from Don's landlady who can hear his screams. Finding him in a delirious state, she vows to look after him and spends the night for reasons of propriety on Don's couch.

In the morning, Tuesday, Don leaves his apartment in a hurry. Helen learns that Don has pawned her coat—the one that brought them together—for a gun. Once more, Helen returns to Don's apartment. He is eager to get rid of her, though she asks him to lend her his raincoat. Don claims their relationship is at an end. Helen, via a reflection in a mirror, spots the gun concealed in the bathroom wash basin and offers him drink as a distraction. Quickly, she is able to retrieve the gun, but Don wrenches it away from her. She reiterates her love for him.

As Helen tries to persuade Don to quit drinking, the door buzzer sounds. Don answers, and Nat enters to return the typewriter Don lost at Gloria's home the night he fell. After Helen persuades him that "Don the writer" and "Don the drunk" are the same person, Don finally commits to writing his novel The Bottle, dedicated to Helen, which will recount the events of the weekend. He drops a cigarette into a glass of whiskey rather than drink it. He recalls that while packing for his lost weekend his mind was on a bottle suspended just outside his window, he ponders, over a reversal of the opening shot, how many other people in New York City are in the same position as he.