Stories of alcoholism and recovery are not only dramatic — they are real, ready-to-shoot dramas.

There is the first act, when the problem arises. The second, when it mounts, and the protagonist begins to touch bottom. And then, the third, with the long climb back to sobriety.

Tales of hubris and humiliation, tears and triumph, they have been a movie mainstay (and Oscar resource) since the groundbreaking “The Lost Weekend” back in 1945.

Yet lately these films have taken an even darker tone.

In "Barney's Version," Paul Giamatti likes his Scotch even more than he likes his Montreal Canadiens — but stays so continually soused he doesn't realize he's losing the only woman he loves.

In "Forever," Stephen Dorff's grade-B movie star — think Kiefer Sutherland, but slipping — is so constantly self-medicated he barely sees his family, and nods off before he can even sample the hookers he's hired.

In “Another Year,” comfy old couple Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen are happy social drinkers, yet barely notice their small circle of swilling friends are drowning in desperate, needy loneliness.

And in "Blue Valentine," pretty young couple Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams have violent alcohol-fueled fights and bleary hung-over quarrels as their marriage slowly falls to pieces around them.

It’s a long, stumbling parade of missed opportunities, pointless mistakes and morning-after regret.

And these are just the films coming out this month.

Add in this year's "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" (hard-drinking Josh Brolin betrays his wife, and an old friend), "All Good Things" (Gosling again, plus Kirsten Dunst, in a self-destructive haze of wine and marijuana) and "Solitary Man" (Michael Douglas indiscriminately chasing cocktails and coeds) and you see a pattern.

And the strongest link is that as desperately hurting as many of these people are, their alcoholism remains unrecognized by themselves or, in most cases, any of the other characters. By the time the films’ end, most of the characters are as sad and soused as they were at the beginning.

No one gets better. People just go on.

Glass consciousness

For years, the movies’ relationship with alcohol was different, infused with Hollywood’s own complicated relationship with status.

That’s because — like perhaps some of the stiff-necked reformers behind the temperance movement — filmmakers talked loftily about “the people” while feeling safely superior to them. Drink was a problem, but it was one of the problems —like overpopulation — that was seen as specifically plaguing the lower classes.

This distinction was reflected in Hollywood’s earliest films. In the silents, there really were no alcoholics, only drunkards — and they spent their time in barrooms and flophouses, fueling their binges on rent money pried out of the thin, white hands of their suffering wives.

The wealthy drank, too, but in films they were generally seen as tipsy figures of fun, outfitted with a top hat and a red nose. Humorous, harmless, they were a staple in comedies where they chiefly served to arbitrarily bedevil or enrich the hero.

Addiction, it seemed, was only a problem when you didn’t have the means to afford it.

Although there were exceptions — like 1937’s great “A Star Is Born” — that construct grew even stronger after the end of Prohibition. Nick and Nora Charles matching each other martini for martini, Mr. Deeds making a merry fool of himself in Manhattan; wealthy carousers were a mainstay of the screwball-comedy genre.

“The Lost Weekend” changed that.

A SERIOUS ILLNESS

Billy Wilder’s classic was perhaps the first to treat alcoholism as a serious illness, detailing the desperation, the selfishness, the shakes, the D.Ts. (It also, with some foresight, identified “enablers” — the hero’s too-indulgent brother and girlfriend — long before that word was coined.)

Yet, even more importantly, it did all that through the character of a nice, educated, upper-middle-class man played by the arch, gentlemanly Ray Milland. This wasn’t Jimmy Cagney’s gangster gone bust in “The Roaring Twenties,” drowning his sorrows in cheap suds, or even poor, doomed James Dunn in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”

No, Milland’s Don Birnam was educated, intelligent, self-aware. With a slight bump in income he could be the sort of character who’d previously been that screwball hero, the well-off tippler. Except his behavior was dangerous, and he was recognizable. Don could be us — and, more terrifyingly, we could be Don.

A frightened alcohol industry offered the studio money to shelve the movie; instead, Paramount released it, and won four Oscars.

One went to Ray Milland, establishing another tradition — that of the light comedian (Jack Lemmon, Gig Young, Meg Ryan, Ben Stiller, Michael Keaton, Sandra Bullock) who establishes seriousness by playing an addict or a drunk. It's a match made in Hollywood, the early "funny" scenes playing to the performer's strengths, while the final rebound provides the necessary, award-worthy uplift.

Lately, however, Hollywood has shown less interest in stories of happy endings and hard-won redemption.

Perhaps it's the recent avalanche of loud low culture, in which binge drinking, blackouts and one-night stands are the stuff of hit comedies, Chelsea Handler memoirs, Facebook party pictures, Lindsay Lohan gossip and just another summer down the shore with Snooki and "the Situation."

Perhaps it’s a growing cynicism that recovery programs are even an answer, that people can ever change.

In recent films like "Julia," a bleary Tilda Swinton doesn't even try to abstain; in "Crazy Heart," Jeff Bridges' successful 12-stepping is treated so offhandedly it barely exists. In "The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans" it's unclear whether Nicolas Cage's officer finally redeems himself or whether his happy sobriety is just another hallucination.

Instead, the vast majority of today’s films feature “functioning alcoholics” — people who seem to be coping under the influence. Yet, as in real life, they’re only living in deep denial.

In “Barney’s Version,” for example, Barney — terrifically acted by Paul Giamatti — uses wine and whiskey as social lubricants. In fact, the only thing they make easier are his capitulations to his own worst impulses. They feed the anger that leads to a fatal feud with his only friend; they encourage the lust that breaks up his one successful relationship.

Barney isn’t a bad person, but he’s a lousy drunk, and his refusal to see that only compounds his agonies.

Tom and Gerri of “Another Year,” meanwhile, are perfectly well-adjusted social drinkers; their wine with dinner is a habit, not a compulsion, and they enjoy the camaraderie it seems to engender. Look closer, though, and you see that a friend of Tom’s long ago drank himself into obese misery, a co-worker of Gerri’s is a mass of wine and neuroses.

But Tom and Gerri try not to look too closely, and the parties at their house go on and on.

In other films, the self-destructive behavior is similarly ignored. No one takes Stephen Dorff aside in “Somewhere” and tells him he needs to confront his habits; in “All Good Things” and the truly wrenching “Blue Valentine,” two couples fall violently apart, questioning everything except their own regular intake of nice wine and good grass in the first, and cheap beer and jug vodka in the second.

And yes, all their problems are — especially in “All Good Things” — rooted in more than substance abuse. If alcohol isn’t their deepest problem, however, it’s certainly the chief obstacle to confronting any other one. Yet instead of acknowledging that and making even a halfhearted appeal for help, these characters reach instead for another glass and often wade even further into the deep end of despair.

Their films — some of them brilliant — feel just as bereft of hope, as sad and stale and empty as a bar at 11 a.m.

It is true, perhaps, that earlier movies often did alcoholics and their struggles a disservice. The real story of recovery doesn’t end with “. . . and I’m an alcoholic.” It begins there and often entails other struggles, and relapses. (“The Days of Wine and Roses” was singularly sharp, early on, at dramatizing this.) Dramas do audiences no favors by making false promises to anyone.

Yet too often, it seems, current movies hold out no promise. They wearily accept substance abuse (and abusive behavior) as an almost inescapable part of our modern lives. To them, addiction is merely a symptom, not the real disease; to them, treating A.A. as an answer would be like praising a consumptive’s use of tea and honey for her cough.

This approach can be a more dramatic one; arguably, it is a more realistic one. But ironically all it often succeeds in doing is sending audiences out of the theater in a grim gray mood — and in need of a quick stiff drink.