DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES: a booze soaked descent into hell

There would appear to be one major implausibility in the premise  for DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES - the very idea that the beautiful, utterly adorable Lee Remick would be single, unattached and strangely attracted to a working stiff like Jack Lemmon. It just doesn't ring true, at least not on paper. 
But in the film it works.
Remick and Lemmon make an odd, but believable couple and that's entirely due to their talents as actors. Lemmon's Joe Clay may be nervy and a little twitchy but he's relentless - in a goofy kind of way - in his pursuit of Remick's Kirsten Arnesen, and he succeeds in cracking her rather icy demeanor. He also persuades her to abandon her life-long teetotalism and join him in his drinking habit which fast becomes an addiction for both of them, hurtling them into a downward spiral of alcoholism.
DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES is a brutal examination of how alcoholism destroys lives. Joe and Kirsten slide from heavy social drinking into addiction without realising what they're doing to themselves. Their descent from successful middle-class professionals to pathetic bums willing to steal, lie and cheat to get their next drink is truly disturbing. Lemmon in particular holds nothing back in portraying the agony and helplessness of a man in the grip of a demon which has reduced him to the state of a howling animal. 

Both he and Remick were Oscar nominated for their performances and he was unlucky not to win. 1963 was a tough year in the Best Actor category; Lemmon was competing against the stars of "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Birdman of Alcatraz" and it was Gregory Peck whose name was on the card when the envelope was opened.
If there's a criticism to be made it's that DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES resembles a recruiting film for Alcoholics Anonymous at times, particularly when Jack Klugman makes his entrance as Joe's AA sponsor, talking like he's an audiobook version of the AA handbook.
It's tempting to say they don't make films like this anymore, but they do. They difference is that Lemmon and Remick and director Blake Edwards succeeded in telling an engaging, disturbing,  powerful and very adult tale of despair and moral disintegration without resorting to violence, nudity or profanity.
Now that kind of film they don't make anymore.