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Success or Snub? The Lost Weekend (18th Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

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  To see part 1, click here . Main Titles~Miklós Rósza - Mildred Pierce On September 2nd, 1945, World War II officially ended when Japan surrendered to the United States. What followed was the most epic party in human history as everyone in the world had what can best be described as a week-long drunken rager. After the dust settled, though, things seemed a lot more unsure for the average American and the country was collectively nervous, thinking, “Now what?” While now we know that the time period immediately following the war was probably the most impressive level of economic growth in American history, they didn’t know that at the time. The war got America out of the Great Depression; now that the war was over, would they go back to the Depression? In addition, the war ended when the atomic bomb(s) was detonated on Japan for the whole world to see. World War II was already the deadliest conflict in human history; now humanity had weapons that could actually end civilization as w

Oscars Retrospective: The Lost Weekend (18th Academy Awards Review)

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  The Lost Weekend~The Lost Weekend - Miklós Rósza If you remember from the last chapter, Billy Wilder did not take his loss of Double Indemnity (1944) to Going My Way (1944) too well. Well, surprise and luckily for him, he ended up winning the following year for The Lost Weekend . Now, under normal circumstances, I would assume that this is because of Hollywood politics trying to make it up to him (a feat that is responsible for more dumb Oscar wins that you can count) but there’s more to it than that. For one, The Lost Weekend is actually a great movie but, even more interestingly, The Lost Weekend also won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. Unlike the Academy Awards, the Cannes Film Festival is considered genuinely prestigious and actually winning an award, let alone winning the biggest award (Grand Prix in 1946, renamed to the Palme d’Or in 1955, back to the Grand Prix in 1964, then back to Palme d’Or in 1975 though Grand Prix now refers to another award), is actua