Sssssssh. Tiptoe into the kitchen. Plug in the coffee. Get out the aspirin. Insist that everyone around you speak in hushed tones. Lie prone on the couch. Grab the remote. It’s New Year’s Day, and after all that hard partying you need time to . . . reflect.
Here’s a cinematic odyssey that might seem a mite familiar as you do just that:
`The Lost Weekend’ (1945): That year’s best picture, best actor (Ray Milland), best director (Billy Wilder) and screenplay Oscars (Charles Brackett and Wilder) were claimed by this hard-hitting, early look at the long-term effects of alcoholism as writer Don Birnem (Milland) goes on a life-changing four-day bender. Milland was known for his light comedic touch in leading roles before this movie transformed his career.
`The Big Hangover’ (1950): A little known comedy-drama with red-haired Van Johnson and ravishing Elizabeth Taylor taking 10 giant steps in the opposite direction: Johnson plays a neophyte lawyer who has an affliction–he can’t abide the taste or smell of liquor. Taylor, as the daughter of the law firm’s big-wig, endeavors to “cure him.” There’s also a dramatic subplot that, like beer and wine, doesn’t mix well with the comedy.
`The Morning After’ (1974) or (1986): In version one, a TV movie, physical comedian Dick Van Dyke got serious in a riches-to-rags story about a public relations executive who loses everything and literally ends up in the gutter because of his alcoholism. In the 1986 version, Jane Fonda plays a washed-up actress who goes on a drunk and wakes up next to a murdered dead man. Did she stab him? Is someone out to frame her? Fonda’s terrific (and nicely paired with Jeff Bridges) as the vain, scared alcoholic in this lesser-known film from director Sidney Lumet.
