REGENT THEATRE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 19, 21 April 1947, Page 5

REGENT THEATRE

“LOST WEEKEND” Tuesday 22, Wednesday 23. One of the most talked-about books, Charles Jackson’s “The Lost Weekend,” will probably be one of the most talked-about motion pictures, if advance notices are any indication. For those who have seen Paramount’s picturisation of the best-seller, costarring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. and due at the Regent Theatre, declare it to be one of the most unusual and daring films ever made. The story concerns the shocking experience of a sensitive, intelligent man during his five days abandon to an insatiable hunger for liquor. The devotion of his sweetheart, the patient understanding of his brother, cannot keep him from going off the deep end into an abyss never yet •interpreted on the screen. It is not until he sinks to the depths of degradation that he finds himself. By then, according to reports, you will have lived through a picture experience so exciting, you will never forget it. Ray Milland plays Don Birnam, the story’s bedevilled hero, and Jane Wyman is seen as Helen, his sweetheart. For both Milland and Miss Wyman their roles in “The Lost Weekend” represent a debut into the dramatic field of acting, as each has heretofore specialised in romantic comedy and other light mediums. Others in the Charles BrackettBilly Wilder film are Phillip Terry, Howard da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen.