Score by
Miklos Rosza
Theremin played by
Samuel Hoffman
It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys,
yeah. But what it does to the mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the
ordinary. I'm competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michaelangelo,
molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John
Barrymore before movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I'm William
Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer, it's the Nile. Nat, it's the Nile and down it moves the barge
of Cleopatra.
Don Birnam, long-time alcoholic, has been "on the wagon" for ten days and
seems to be over the worst; but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother
Wick and girlfriend Helen, he begins a four-day bender. In flashbacks we see past events, all gone wrong because of the
bottle. But this bout looks like being his last... one way or the other.
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