This ground-breaking drama about an alcoholic writer trying to kick the bottle won Oscars for best film, direction (Billy Wilder), screenplay and actor (Ray Milland). Don Birnam (Milland) is the booze-afflicted antihero, suffering from writer's block and a frighteningly convincing case of the DTs. Despite the grim subject matter, there are glimpses of Wilder's characteristic mordant wit - the (hidden) bottle dangling out of the apartment window and Birnam's desperate mission to pawn his typewriter on a Jewish holiday - and the director's location work in New York's Third Avenue district is exemplary. Casting the hitherto bland Milland was a stroke of genius, but the scenes involving Birnam's brother (Phillip Terry) and girlfriend (Jane Wyman) are soft-centred and don't really work, making this literally a message that comes in a bottle.

Longtime alcoholic Don Birnam has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.