The lost weekend 1945 - Realistic look at the problem of alcoholism

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Billy Wilder
Main Cast: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen

"Billy Wilder's searing portrait of an alcoholic features an Oscar-winning performance by Ray Milland as Don Birnam, a writer whose lust for booze consumes his career, his life, and his loves. Years before addiction became common currency in the movies (or in American life), Milland etched an indelible portrait of an alcoholic in denial, willing to lie to friends and family, steal from strangers, and give up his livelihood for a drink; Milland's pained and weary desperation as he searches for a pawnshop or the abject terror of his bout with DTs still ring horribly true. The Lost Weekend also manages the clever (and wholly appropriate) feat of making Milland's Don Birnam sympathetic without asking the audience to feel sorry for him or to ignore the deadly foolishness of his actions. Director Billy Wilder (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Charles M. Brackett) makes clear that Don is intelligent and not without talent; he's also weak-willed and a willing slave to the bottle, and while he knows what drink is doing to him, he's unable to stop himself until a final collapse grinds him to a halt. The Lost Weekend is also punctuated by bitter humor (Frank Faylen as the Bellevue alcoholic ward attendant is as funny as he is devoid of compassion) and a superb supporting cast, especially Howard Da Silva as Nat the bartender and Doris Dowling as the bar girl with a softer heart than we'd imagine; and Wilder seems to relish the unstated irony that the drug that's destroying Don Birnam is openly available and used readily by others all around him." - www.allmovie.com

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The bachelor father 1931 - Great performance by Sir C. Aubrey Smith

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021633/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Main Cast: Marion Davies, Ralph Forbes, C. Aubrey Smith, Ray Milland

"A grumpy old baronet, happily unmarried, decides to send for his three grown-up illegitimate children and provide them a home at his manor. To his surprise, he finds himself bonding with his uninhibited American daughter. Can he find satisfaction in his new role as 'the bachelor father'?
This 1931 film, in which he gives a robust performance, marked the arrival at MGM of elderly Sir C. Aubrey Smith, very soon to be one of Hollywood's most valuable character actors. With his great hooked nose and beetling brows, Sir Aubrey looked every inch the part of the duke or general or statesman he would play so often. He would remain very much in demand in studios all over town, right up to his death in 1948.
The film's top-billed star is Marion Davies. Best remembered today as the mistress of media mogul William Randolph Hearst and the chatelaine of Hearst Castle, the most fabulous residence on the West Coast, she was actually a very talented and pretty comedienne. For a few years, Hearst attempted to make her the queen of MGM (with her own production company and a huge bungalow-dressing room) but the studio already had several other queens - Dressler, Garbo, Shearer, Crawford - and he eventually moved her to Warner Bros. Here Miss Davies gets a chance to joke and clown and her scenes with Sir Aubrey are entertaining. Her love interest is played by Ralph Forbes, a handsome young British actor who was just starting to find good films as the silent days ended. He had all the qualities for major stardom, but sadly it was not to be. Celebrity would come to Ray Milland, here making one of his first screen appearances."

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Easy living 1937 - A mixture of two artistic manifestations: the director's and the screenwriter's

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028816/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Mitchell Leisen
Main Cast: Edward Arnold, Jean Arthur, Ray Milland

"Adapted by Preston Sturges from a play by Vera Caspary, Easy Living's mix of slapstick humor, topical 'in' jokes ('Wallace Whistling' being a great roman-a-clef for gossip columnist Walter Winchell), social realism, and social satire, make it one of the most potent viewing experiences that one can find among 1930s comedies. Elements of its story recall works such as Mark Twain's story The Million Pound Note, as well as early '30s topical comedies such as Zoltan Korda's Cash, while other aspects call to mind such future Sturges works as Christmas in July, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and Hail the Conquering Hero. The plot and the pacing of most of the movie will leave even modern viewers breathless with laughter. The picture's frantic, screwball trajectory and velocity are compromised ever so slightly by just a couple of slow points. Director Mitchell Leisen occasionally lets the action drag in ways that Sturges, once he started directing his own scripts, never would have permitted. Sturges would have treated his script's obligatory romance between the hero and heroine with enough breezy humor to let it flow freely from one section of the satirical body of the work into another. Leisen, by contrast, has it played straight and sincere, with all of the attendant seriousness of purpose entailed therein.
Although not quite in a league with My Man Godfrey, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, or His Girl Friday, Easy Living is close enough to merit audiences as big as theirs, and also close enough to Sturges' own movies in content, if not approach, to demand attention from his fans as well. And certainly no movie ever portrayed the interaction of the different classes of New York City during the Great Depression in a zanier fashion." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/easy-living-v90257/

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Three smart girls 1936 - Deanna's debut feature

Barbara Read, Deanna Durbin and Nan Grey

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028373/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,9

Director: Henry Koster
Main Cast: Barbara Read, Deanna Durbin, Nan Grey, Binnie Barnes, Charles Winninger, Alice Brady, Ray Milland

"A mere footnote to most modern day viewers, in her day Deanna Durbin was a tremendously popular star, whose appeal is often credited with pulling Universal out of a sea of red ink. Her debut feature, Three Smart Girls, established her as a cute, wholesome teen-ager who also happens to have a truly impressive operatic voice. Durbin was never an especially imposing actress, but rarely was she asked to be. Girls certainly doesn't tax her, but it does showcase her very engaging personality and presents a lightweight story that makes up in charm what it lacks in significance (or believability). Henry Koster directs in a fluid, easygoing style that makes the material seem simple rather than simplistic, and there's a genial air to the whole enterprise which is hard to resist. Durbin is in very good voice, with a marvelous 'My Heart is Singing' and a stunning 'Il Bacio'. She is well supported by Nan Grey and Barbara Read - they have a rapport makes them credible as sisters - and Charles Winninger, Alice Brady and Binnie Barnes are all in good form. A delightful film, Girls has aged much better than many other family-themed films from the same era." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/three-smart-girls-v113605/

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