User reviews

I just watched this with Mom who hadn't seen this before so we were both watching this with fresh eyes. William Holden plays a drifter who wanders into a small town hoping to reacquaint with college buddy Cliff Robertson who's the son of a grain company boss. Robertson has Kim Novak for a girlfriend, one who's tired of being valued for her looks as she's a shoo-in for winning the title occasion's beauty contest. Other female characters start having urges around Holden like the schoolteacher played by Rosalind Russell and the teen sister of Novak played by Susan Strasberg. Joshua Logan, who also directed the play version of this, helms this film version with quite a theatrical and cinematic flourish with a music score to match that makes it quite admirable if a bit over-the-top in some scenes. Still, the performances are very good with Ms. Russell and Ms. Strasberg particularly memorable. Also, Arthur O'Connell also was good as Ms. Russell's beau. In summary, both me and Mom highly enjoyed Picnic.

There is so much to enjoy in this American melodrama with a deliciously miscast William Holden and a gelid, beautiful Kim Novak that the film can be seen again and again without being disturbed by the 40 year old Holden playing the drop out stallion trying to make amends with his past forging a sort of future for himself, at least that's what I think he wants and I'm sticking with that notion. Holden plays the loser with his shiny boots and smallish brain and that's what reminds us this is just a romantic drama thought by William Inge with a patina of reality and that's all that is real, the patina. I didn't care that emotionally couldn't play because emotionally worked for me thanks to the sexual power of the miscast star. William Holden is a sort of God who awakes the (seemingly) heavily sedated Novak into a towering passion. I would have too. The supporting cast is sensational. Rosalind Russell is a jarring masterpiece of an over the top clichè. The old maid, school teacher with a taste for alcohol and an understandable terror of her own future, overtaking her at an incredible speed. Susan Strasberg, in the part created by Kim Stanley on the Broadway stage is delightful but made me wonder what Kim Stanley may have done with that part. Betty Field is the one character that expresses the most saying the least. She, as per usual, is outstanding. All in all, a film/play that shouldn't be dismissed.

William Inge had his finger on the pulse of small town America. He wasn't checking the heartbeats of its inhabitants but his own. I've just said that as if I knew all about it and I don't, but I sense it. I mean, "Splendor In The Grass", "The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs", "Come Back Little Sheeba" That's all the evidence we need to know that he was a male writer with a woman's heart. "Picnic" epitomises that theory. Director Joshua Logan and writer Daniel Taradash trusted Inge's world without questioning it. Everything flows with the irrational sanity of a woman's heart. William Holden was a bit too old for the part but who cares! He is William Holden, capable to provoke passions of Mediterranean intensity at any age. He seems a bit self conscious at times and that helps the character's foibles no end. Kim Novak is breathtaking. Susan Strasberg milks her tomboy with a longing for all its worth. Betty Field, Daisy Buchanan in the original "Great Gatsby", gives a masterful performance without uttering a word that may reveal what she's actually feeling, until the end of course. That scene in which she tries to stop her daughter from going away, is as much Field's as it is Inge's. Rosalind Russell didn't get the Oscar for her superb, time bomb disguised in a school teacher's dress, performance. Her craving for sex and romance and sex and marriage and sex is as bold as anything she had ever done and Rosalind Russell new how to be bold from "His Girl Friday" to "Auntie Mame". The Moonglow sequence has become a classic moment in pictures. Deservedly so. I would suggest, if you haven't done it yet, take a trip through William Inge's territory. Familiar faces, familiar landscapes, familiar feelings, all completely new.

There are a few great writers of the overheated repressed and desperate from the theater and film world of the 1950's. At the top sit the two greatest, Tennessee Williams and William Inge. In a decade of conformity and great prosperity Inge and Williams tackled subjects ahead of their time. Of course they in some cases had to veil the subject matter but that lead to some wonderful revelations in writing and reading between the lines.

In this DVD from Colombia of Inge's Pulitzer Prize winning ‘Picnic' we have one of the best films of this genre of sexual repression, animal heat, and desperation in small town America. Most reviewers of this film might begin with the leads but I must start of with the wonderful Verna Felton as Helen Potts the sweet old lady who is caretaker of her aged mother and lives next door to the Owens family. This gifted and now forgotten character actress sets the tone of the picture as she welcomes drifter Hal Carter (William Holden) into her house for some breakfast. At the end of the film she glows in tender counterpoint to the dramatic ending. She is the only person who understands Hal, even more than Madge (Kim Novak). Her speech about having a man in the house is pure joy to watch. Her most touching scene is at the picnic when she tells Betty Field. `You don't know what it's meant to me having you and the girls next door.' It is a small but important performance that frames the entire story with warmth and understanding. Betty Field turns in a sterling performance as Flo Owens, Mother of Madge and Millie. She is disapproving of Millie's rebellious teen and smothering of her Kansas hothouse rose Madge. This deeply felt performance is a stark contrast to her lusty waitress in Inges `Bus Stop' the next year. A single Mom trying in desperation to keep Madge from making the same mistakes she did. She becomes so wrapped up in Madge's potential for marriage to the richest boy in town she completely ignores the budding greatness that is bursting to get out in her real treasure. Millie. Susan Strasberg creates in her Millie a sweet comic oddball. She is the youngest daughter who awkwardly moves through the landscape of Nickerson Kansas nearly un-noticed, reading the scandalous `Ballad of the Sad Café' - being the only one who is different and can't hide it. Her yearning to get out of the smallness of small town life is colored with the skill of a young actress with greatness her. Watch how she handles her most tender scenes with Kim Novak. Strasberg has a deep connection with Millie, an understanding of what it means to want to get out and yet want so desperately to fit in. Rosalind Russell nearly steals the show as the fourth woman in the Owens household boarder, Rosemary the schoolteacher. She is the living example of what Flo doesn't want Millie to become, a frantic, hopeless and clutching spinster. In the capable hands of Miss Russell we have a real powerhouse of a performance. She imbues Rosemary with all the uptight disapproval of a woman who knows that her time has past and there are very few options left. She is electric in her need for love. Every nuance of her emotions is sublime in her presentation. Just watch her hands alone. She is present down to her fingertips as this poor clinging woman. Floating above all of this is Madge Owens, the kind of girl who is too pretty to be real. The kind of girl who in a small town like this is not understood to have any real feelings or thoughts other than those that revolve around being beautiful and empty. Enter Kim Novak, who is just such a girl. Who could ever expect such a beauty to be anything more than just pretty? But Miss Novak, a vastly underrated actress in her day (as were most beauties of the day) paints a knowing and glowing portrait of Madge. Her explosion of sexual heat upon meeting Hal for the first time is internal and barely perceptible until she looks at him from behind the safety of the screen door the end of their first scene. It's as if that screen door is a firewall protecting her from the flames. This device is used again near the end of the film where the screen becomes something that keeps her and Hal separated from each other in a new way. At that point it is a safety net keeping them from sex by calling her home. Here she hesitates again to reveal her longing for him. She fights in the early part of the film to keep her sexual desire for Hal in check. That night she loses her fight at the picnic and we watch as she opens to reveal a woman of feelings and dreams so much deeper than the prettiness of her eyes or the luminosity of her skin. This is one of Kim Novak's early great roles and one she fills out with lush and deep emotion. The lives of all of these women of Nickerson Kansas are changed one Labor Day in 1955 when Hal Carter comes steaming into town. William Holden gives a raw and wounded portrayal to Hal, a man at the edge of his youth and on the verge of becoming a lost man. He lives as he always has, on the cache of his golden boy charm and his muscular magnetism. Holden was 35 when he made Picnic, a golden boy at the edge of his youth. He was perfect for the part. Some reviewers say he was too old to play Hal, but I disagree. Without being thirty-five in real life as well as in the story Rosemary's `Crummy Apollo' speech would not be so effective or devastating. Hal is a man 10 to 12 years out of college who never bothered to grow up, a man who never let anyone get too close for fear they might see through is bravado and discover his fears of feeling something, anything before it's too late.

Holden also brings a sexual heat to the film that is eons beyond the time it was filmed. He is presented almost like a slab of meat, something we were used to seeing in our female stars of the day, but not so blatantly in our men. He struts around in a pre-Stonewall dream of sexy hotness. Not only the girls in town notice him but a few boys too. (There are several layers to Nick Adams paperboy if one bothers to look.) When finally Holden sparks with Novak they blow the lid off of the uptight code bound studio-strangled world of Hollywood in the Fifties. The film is photographed magnificently in lush color and cinemascope by famed cinematographer James Wong Howe. The famous score by George Durning is classic not only for the famous reworking of the old standard `Moonglow' but for his virtuosity in dramatic power. This is a giant of a score from the silver age of film music. The direction by Josh Logan is perfect in every way and stands among the best of his work. The DVD has a few extras, more than most Colombia releases. However I want to point out that there is an excellent photomontage with music from the film to be found here. In watching the shots and listening to the accompanying score by Durning one can really appreciate his artistry as a composer. Finally, this is a very sexy film and should not be missed as a lesion in how really smart people got so much past the censors in an age of sexual repression and conformity.

Picnic was the second film that acclaimed stage director Joshua Logan did, adapting work that he had previously directed for Broadway. I absolutely marvel at Logan's sense of the cinema for someone who worked primarily in the theater. Had he concentrated on the screen instead, I'm sure Logan would have been as acclaimed as John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock or even Orson Welles.

William Inge's play Picnic is set in a small Kansas town where drifter William Holden comes to town to look up and old friend from college, Cliff Robertson. As it happens he arrives on Labor Day and the town is having their annual Labor Day picnic. In that 24 hours he changes the lives of all around him, mostly for the better. Especially the women folk.

Holden does a very good job in a role he was really miscast in. The part should have gone to Marlon Brando or James Dean or even Paul Newman. Newmwn was in the original Broadway cast, but in the Cliff Robertson part. The lead was done by Ralph Meeker.

The women of all ages go for Holden unbridled sexuality from Verna Felton, Betty Field, Rosalind Russell, Kim Novak, and Susan Strassberg in descending order of age. They all kind of like him, but Holden goes for Novak who's Robertson's girl. I think you can figure the rest of it out.

Arthur O'Connell as confirmed bachelor/boyfriend of Russell got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts which incidentally was directed by Joshua Logan on Broadway and uncredited for the screen when John Ford left the film. But the performance that was absolutely the best was that of Rosalind Russell as the schoolteacher who's approaching what would be called spinster hood and not liking it a bit. She's sending out a booty call to Holden that is unmistakable.

In her memoirs Russell said that when Logan asked her to take Eileen Heckart's part from Broadway, he didn't even get to finish the sentence when she agreed. Picnic was playing on Broadway the same time she was doing Wonderful Town and she admired the play by Inge and the work of Joshua Logan very much.

I like the individual performances in Picnic, but even more I like the way Logan used the whole town of Hutchinson, Kansas where the film was shot on location as a stage setting. One of the best transferals from stage to cinema ever and it sure helped to have someone at the helm who knew the property and knew how to accomplish his goal.

Picnic is a great view of America in the red states in the Eisenhower years and should not be missed.

Hunky drifter Hal (William Holden) arrives in a small Kansas town, disturbing the status quo in "Picnic," a 1955 film based on Wiliam Inge's play and directed by Josh Logan. It co-stars Kim Novak, Susan Strasberg, Rosalind Russell, Betty Field, Cliff Robertson, Arthur O'Connell, and Verna Felton.

It's Labor Day and time for the big annual picnic. Beautiful, 19-year-old Madge Owens prepares to attend the picnic with Arthur (Robertson), a young man from a wealthy family. She fights with her jealous, nerdy sister, Millie. And she's warned by her mother (Field) that with each passing year she will become less marketable as a wife. She's advised to solidify things with Arthur. Renting a room from them is Rosemary, a schoolteacher - what one called "an old maid" back then. A brittle loudmouth, she's doesn't have not much use for her boyfriend Howard, but he's taking her to the picnic.

When Hal jumps off the train to look up his old college friend Arthur, he innocently becomes a catalyst for change. In one way or another, he manages to arouse emotions - mostly sexual - in nearly everyone he meets. A braggart who gives his loose-ends, wandering life a romantic spin, he's hoping Arthur's dad will give him a job. Then he sees Madge.

"Picnic" is a beautiful story about loneliness, settling for what you can get, love, frustration, and dreams left behind. Madge is sick of being the pretty one, Millie is sick of being the smart one, Rosemary is sick of being an old maid, Arthur is sick of not being a winner in his father's eyes. "Picnic" contains some memorable scenes, the best remembered being the classic "Moonglow" sequence when Madge shuns tradition and gives into her womanly feelings in one of the most erotic scenes ever filmed.

William Holden is too old for the role for Hal (his classmate, played by Cliff Robertson, is 29) but his casting is excellent. Virile, oozing with sex appeal and good looks, Hal turns a lot of heads when he's shirtless and when he flashes his gorgeous smile. In Madge, he sees his last chance to make something of himself; with her as his inspiration, he can do anything. Gorgeous in lavender, Kim Novak's Madge is every man's dream, and as she makes evident in her scenes with Robertson, she isn't sure this is all there is. When she meets Hal, he awakens feelings in her she's never had. Betty Field does a beautiful job as Flo Owens, a woman whose life has been one of disappointment but hopes for a good marriage for Madge. Susan Strasberg as the geeky Millie is superb - tomboyish, with feelings for things other than English literature held inside. The main characters all believe their lives are on a set path. No one believes this more than Millie. "I will be living in New York and writing books no one reads," she announces to her sister. But it's she who convinces Madge that for the fearless, life doesn't have to be set in stone.

Arthur O'Connell is effective as Rosemary's boyfriend - though he normally goes along with her, he can be tough when necessary. The scene where he's completely overcome by the town's women and can't get a word in is a classic. Arthur's afraid of change, but his life is going to change by unanimous female consent.

One of the best performances comes from veteran Verna Felton as Mrs. Potts. Her final scene with Flo Owens is so poignant as she talks about what it's meant to her to watch Flo's daughters grow up while she cares for her invalid mother. When she meets Hal, it's as if her whole existence comes alive once again. "There was a man around, and it was good," she says. Felton essays a wonderful, wise woman with an understanding of life and love and makes the role shine.

The problematic role is that of Rosemary. When people say that Picnic is dated, they're perhaps speaking of Rosemary, an old maid whose sexual desires become unbearable once she sees Hal and witnesses Hal and Madge together. "Every year I keep telling myself something will happen," she tearfully tells Howard. "But it doesn't." What's dated is the implication that an unmarried woman must be unfulfilled - the concept is dated, but it fits into '50s middle America - and don't kid yourself, step out of a big city and there are plenty of people who still feel this way. Rosemary's big confrontation scene with Howard is magnificent acting, but I frankly found Russell over the top in parts of the movie. Some of it is the character, some is not enough attention to directing her. Rosemary might be annoying, but she is also an object of pity. When you wish she'd just stop talking and leave, there's a problem.

"Picnic" doesn't tell us about the rest of these peoples' lives. The final scenes are really just the beginning. Though both Hal and Madge want to build a real life together, one wonders if they can, and if love and passion are enough to carry them through hard times. One suspects that Madge will one day return to Kansas, sadder but wiser. Hal will always have wanderlust, always put the best spin on marginal situations, and never really hold down a good job. Rosemary will be able to put on an act that she has what she wants, but that's all it will be. Without the competition of Madge, Millie may just surprise herself by blossoming, allowing the womanly part of her in, and have some opportunities in the big city that are more than career-based. In fact, of all of the characters, she perhaps has the best future in front of her.

A slice of '50s life, thought provoking, excellent characterizations - Picnic is one of the best films of the '50s with two of its brightest stars. Highly recommended.

A small Kansas town prepares for its annual Labour Day picnic when a young, good looking bum turns up looking for a job and turns everyone's lives upside down.

Very charming romantic comedy / drama - mostly drama - beautifully filmed in Technicolor and featuring some first rate performances, particularly from a young Susan Strasberg, Arthur O'Connell who contributor the most comedy and Rosalind Russell as the morally uptight spinster teacher who really wants an exciting life. The film features many strong scenes at the picnic including the dance scene with Holden and Novak and clearly for it's day this film was pretty steamy.

There are faults, Holden is twice accused of various wrongs in the film and these scenes are less convincing and frankly just don't make much sense. In addition, I'm not sure Holden, great actor that he is, is really right for the lead and that perhaps a James Dean type would persuade on the anger / passion front more convincingly. Overall though a very watchable tale with characters you can enjoy spending time with.

The William Inge play upon which the film is based was a biting look at the prejudicial and insular communities of small-town America. In out-of-town runs, Joshua Logan (who directed both play and film) discerned that audiences preferred a more positive viewpoint, resulting in the story we see on screen. Logan also opened up the play's one set to include the entire community very effectively, better than most stage-to-film productions.

This may be my favorite film of all time. There is so much to like, from the script to the acting, from the music to the editing.

With the changes made by Logan, Picnic is--at its heart--a love story. William Holden plays Hal Carter, a young man who drifts into a small Kansas town and meets Madge Owens (Kim Novak), the beautiful daughter of a woman who is grooming her for marriage to a young man from a well to do family. Madge feels trapped by the expectations of her mother and the entire town, a victim of her own beauty.

Holden plays Hal as someone who is desperate. He feels time passing him by. With no prospects on the horizon, he blows into town to see his old college buddy, Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson), hoping to find a job. Hal has a chip on his shoulder and projects a façade of confidence that is easy to see through.

Madge is desperate in her own way. She wants to establish her own identity, but she is playing a role proscribed for her by the town. As queen of the annual fall festival, she is a virginal offering to the gods of propriety and tradition.

All of the actors in this film do tremendous jobs. I must single out Rosalind Russell who plays Miss Rosemary Sydney, a middle-aged school teacher who boards in the Owens household. She too is desperate, feeling doomed to live the remainder of her life without fulfilling her dreams of marriage with all its trappings. Like Hal, she puts on a brave front, but the film's narrative brings her to a point where she is stripped of pretensions and the viewer sees and feels her desperation. I always wondered why Russell did not receive the Academy Award for this multi-leveled, gut-wrenching performance. Then I read that she was upset that she was not billed as the female lead. After years of top billing and box office success, she was billed below Kim Novak--a relative newcomer. So, she asked that she not be considered for Best Supporting Actress. This is one of her best performances.

Picnic gives us so many memorable scenes--from the scenes of the fall festival, to the dancing scene between Holden and Novak, to the final scene of the film. Some of the best scenes take place in the plot of grass that lies between the back of the Owens house and the alley that borders the backyards. When Hal first arrives in town, broke and travel-weary, he walks down that alley and observes another world, where families live and interact, where there is a sense of belonging. He knows that if he can make his way from the outside world represented by the alley to the inside world represented by the back steps of the houses, he might gain access to another world, with its vague promise of a better life.

As a young man looking to find his place in life, Holden's portrayal of Hal deserves to be elevated to iconic status, along with the rebels of Brando and Dean.

A macho drifter (William Holden) sidles into a small town in Nowheresville, U.S.A. and the local womenfolk, who all apparently think that their menfolk aren't up to snuff, drool all over him like he's a stripper at a bachelorette party. Not much else happens in this wanna-be sultry film based on the William Inge play.

The 1950s were a big decade for big movies based on big plays. Unfortunately, every film maker was under so much pressure to tone down whatever it was that made the play big in the first place, that the movies based on them seem all too often like a big to-do over mighty little. "Picnic" is nearly plot less; the only suspense comes in wondering if Kim Novak is going to ditch her dull home town and take off with her hunk of man.

Holden was a good actor, but he gives a silly performance here. The script and the direction push too hard the fact that we're supposed to be overwhelmed by his virility---which is a shame, because that was one of Holden's most striking attributes when he was allowed to act more naturally. His furry chest was up there with some of the most famous chests in screen history, yet they had him shave it for this film so that he would look younger. He instead resorts to ripping off his shirt every so often like the Scottish janitor from the Simpsons.

Kim Novak, on the other hand, was never really a good actress, and this movie didn't change my mind. Talk about famous chests---holy cow, she could poke eyes out with those things! The BIG moment between her and Holden comes when they dance at a town social, if dance is quite the right word. If you've seen Elaine on "Seinfeld" dance, you will have a pretty good indication of what these two look like.

The best performance in the film comes from Rosalind Russell, who plays the sexually frustrated town shrew, married to the town drunk (Arthur O'Connell). She's able to convey the desperation felt by a woman slowly wasting away in a forgotten corner of the American heartland and illustrates exactly what Novak's character is afraid of becoming.

I know I'm being pretty hard on this movie, but actually I did enjoy it. It's really nothing special, so don't go out of your way to see it, but it is fun to make fun of all the cornball 50s trappings.

Grade: B-

It pains me to see people miss Picnic's message; as people hastily label it as 'outdated' or flawed in any way, they neglect the fact that what Inge, Logan, and the cast have offered us is indeed universal. Set on Labor Day weekend in Middle America, this is a film about the bittersweet irony of living in a world governed by rules and time. The characters in Picnic is confronted by a demon that, if not dealt with appropriately, serves to consume them and ensure that they become the thing they most fear. In a desperate search to find love, Rosemary (Rosalind Russell) alienates people to the extent that she seems increasingly destined to be alone. Admired throughout the town for her beauty, Madge (Kim Novak), in her unwillingness or inability to assert herself, is trapped inside her pretty face and finds she cannot build a character to support it. Her younger sister Millie (Susan Strasberg) is devoted to intellectual pursuit but finds her intellectual superiority complex serves to limit her peer group and rob her of her childhood. She is seen throughout the film sneaking cigarettes, and at one point steals a swig of whiskey, all in a rather revealing display of her conflict with regards to her place in the transition from youth to adulthood. Mrs Owens (Betty Field), having been left by her husband presumably for a younger woman, attempts to force Madge into an early marriage to a rich man so that she will not face the same anguish, but her dominating insistence on Madge's beauty as her chief asset is what eventually drives her away with little regret. This truly is the story of the varying ways people create and deal with solitude. Each character undergoes the struggle we all must to find a person beneath the masks we hide behind. It is a study of the irony of the evanescence of happiness - at this Labor Day picnic that is the great joyful gathering of the entire town, each of our main characters seeks their own escape. The emotional rawness of the end of Summer is exposed and serves as the perfect time for seasonal as well as personal transition. They are all, in effect, living parts of a sunset, as described by Russell in perhaps the most significant examination of time in the film. Holden's character is unique in that it is a true testament to the everyman and the power of chance. His arrival in this town is in fact the catalyst for reflection and action, and he shakes things up without having any inherent wisdom or inspiration (he is actually something of a moron, thus his ability to make things happen is so much more intriguing). That this is a passionate and beautifully acted (the occasional vacancy and slowness only a reinforcement of the emotional stagnancy Logan intends to have us defeat) love story with a heart-wrenchingly beautiful theme song is only icing on the cake.

You get the feeling that with a different leading man and leading lady that this movie could have been great, but as it is, it just winds up being good entertainment.

William Holden is at least ten years too old for the part of a young man floating through life (he was 36 at the time). His attempts at playing an exuberant college jock turned drifter fall flat. The lines he speaks just don't fit the image of William Holden - this movie came out five years after he played the worldly cynic, Joe Gillis, in "Sunset Boulevard."

And Kim Novak's character isn't very appealing. Her main angst in life is that she's pretty and that's all people care about. But she doesn't transform herself during the course of the movie, which is what one would expect. She's just as vacuous at the end when she tells Hal Carter (Holden) that she'll run off with him when the time comes.

The more interesting of the two sisters, and the sexier and more appealing at least to my eye, was Susan Strasberg.

Other great characters in the movie were Rosalind Russell as an over-the-top old maid with the hots for William Holden. Her scene with Arthur O'Connell (Jimmy Stewart's drinking buddy in "Anatomy of a Murder") where she breaks down and begs him to marry her was among the best in the movie. Verna Felton plays the kindly older woman everyone wishes they had for a neighbor.

There are some nostalgic shots of Fifties Americana at the picnic which centers the story, but the main characters just never grabbed me the way the author, William Inge, intended. Holden and Novak are both miscast as young lovers and their acting is awkward at times, particularly Novak's at the beginning of the film. There seems to be a disconnect between the lines spoken and the acting. Cliff Robertson adds nothing to the role of the rich kid in this love triangle either.

Entertaining, but that's about all.

I like the surface simplicity of this movie, beneath which lie important questions: Can we be free of our ancestors' demons? Can love between two emotionally crippled people be healthy?

Madge and Hal are -- probably tragically - made for each other. Each is a product of a broken home. Each wants to create a life worth living, despite family history, circumstances, and friends who expect little of them. My heart goes out to both of them. (The sad truth is that Madge's mother's warning will probably come true.)

I love the ambiguity of the movie's ending. I read that William Inge (or was it the screenwriter?) had originally had Madge return to her five and dime deadend job. I much prefer the ending that Mr. Logan chose.

Alcohol ought to be listed in the cast credits. It plays a big role at the picnic, and the effects of parental alcoholism pervade Hal's and Madge's lives.

Roz Russell the town schoolmarm and Howard the shopkeeper provide delightfully lighthearted counterpoints.

No car crashes, no karate. Just a simple story, simple setting, and timeless questions.

I wasn't terribly impressed with this film. It is pure melodrama wrapped in a soap opera.

There are several things I don't quite get about this film. First of all how could they cast a 37 year old William Holden in the male lead as a not-so-long out of college boy. And to put Kim Novak as his love interest who was only 21 at the time. Not only was Holden miscast, but I have also never understood all the adoration given Kim NOvak, First of all, she really is not all that attractive, but rather ordinary looking. In here, she actually looks a little overweight. And I have never been impressed with her acting skills. She always comes across as sullen and sulking.

I did find the Kansas location shooting interesting and loved the glimpse it gave into life in the 50's. I especially liked the scenes from the picnic at the fairgrounds - with all the classic races (3-legged races, "carry the girl", "throw the rolling pin") - what a hoot. There were plenty of cute, fat baby shots, kids laughing and playing, pie eating contests, music at the band stand and of course the crowning of the "Neewollah Queen" (Halloween spelled backwards). I will have to say that I found it a little creepy when all the spectators were chanting and bowing to her - it looked like a cult gathering.

Another thing I didn't get was all the publicity around the "Moonglow dance sequence". I had to go back through the movie again to even pick it out - because it didn't even stand out to me the first time. It really was nothing special. Except for the fact that apparently Holden had to get knee-walking drunk to even play the scene since he couldn't dance. And then he demanded an extra $8000 for stuntman premium.

So if you want to see a glimpse into 1950's American life in the Mid-west - but with an extreme dose of melodrama - then by all means, take a "Picnic".

Picnic offers superior acting all around, some great cinematography, and a number of excellent scenes, including the famous dance sequence between Holden and Novak. The writing, unfortunately, veers between wonderful and maudlin, and the movie feels outdated in many ways. Worst of all, the directing and music can be heavy-handed at times, clubbing the viewer with melodrama in some of the key moments, when a more subtle approach would have turned this into a real classic.

Yet, despite its flaws, there's something special about this film. It has a haunting quality that I can't quite put my finger on. A kind of nostalgia - not for the supposed innocence of small-town life, which the film shows to be a myth, but for the disappearing natural wildness of ourselves as people, the primitive element in humanity that both causes problems and gives us real vitality.

My wife and I found ourselves discussing Picnic at length over dinner the following night and even watched several of the scenes again. There are many good details and powerful moments scattered among the weaker parts. I appreciated William Holden's performance even more the second time around - his sense of impatience and desperation are palpable. And he's such a great presence on the screen - I wound up watching him more than Novak in the dance sequence. In fact, my one disappointment with this scene is that Novak doesn't serve as his cinematic equal. She's no Bacall who can fill the screen with Bogart. Rosalind Russell and Arthur O'Connell both do great jobs, especially during the scene where they are discussing marriage. Susan Strasberg pulls off a difficult role and manages to look even more attractive than Kim Novak at times, reminding me of a young Winona Ryder.

The Holden and Novak characters are both viewed as sexual objects, yet they're actually quite humble people who can't handle the shallowness of the society around them and who are searching for genuine love. William Holden is always a pleasure to watch, and his fans should find this role particularly interesting. Picnic won't go down as a great film, but there is a great film lurking somewhere inside it.

It is hard to watch movies like "Picnic" today. Both the story and the storytelling are clearly of a different era. To see them today for the first time is a little jarring.

First because "Picnic", while a successful stage play and a story of an earlier more innocent time, seems more than just out of date. Maybe it is the combination of nostalgia, for people, places and a period of time. Combine that with characters that are "just plain folk", it just doesn't play as well as I'm sure it did in the 1950's. Perhaps that's why despite a revival of the play on Broadway several years back, it along with other Inge plays are not revived as much as others.

The storytelling or film making is of another era also. Hard for me to describe but whenever I see a movie like "Picnic", "On the Waterfront", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" or many others, they all have the same 1950's feel to them. I'm not well-versed in camera technique, but there is no mistaking that none of these films could have been made at any other time than the 1950's. Maybe it's the wave of a different type of director, like Logan and Kazan and George Stevens.

A good picture, but not a great one. And William Holden, at 37, was way too old for this role.

6 out of 10

A beautifully shot and acted film (for the most part) suffers from awkward staging and has believeability problems. The director can't seem to make up his mind whether it's going to be a filmed play (like "Long Day's Journey into Night") or a real movie adaptation of a play.

As for the acting, everyone is excellent with one notable exception - Kim Novak has the same problem that her character does. She's pretty and the camera loves her, but her performance leaves you wondering if she understood the story at all. Her famous dance with William Holden is very sexy, but she plays it completely wrong, with absolutely no character or expression. Rosalind Russell, with her incredible unrestrained performance, just makes her Novak look that much worse.

My favorite scene is the one where Russell has just pleaded with O'Connell to marry her. He's driving away and she clutches one of the posts on the porch, underneath the sign "Room For Rent". If there was ever an image that summed up the lives of women in the 1950s, this was it.

Colourful and bold evocation of 1950s small town American life and mores. True William Holden is a little old for the role here but he brings such charisma to the role that it is only becomes any sort of problem in some of his cavorting with the elfin Susan Strasberg and his more boyish pranks. For the most part he is ideal as the stranger who comes to town and turns it upside down. In the UK the 50s ethos carried on well into the 60s but it is clear from this and other films, like Rebel Without a Cause, that the 50s was well and done with before the end of the decade. Holden is fine then and the supporting cast just about holds up helped by some wonderful staging, particularly during the titular, event. Kim Novak seems in a different class altogether and I don't recall, even in Vertigo, her looking quite so beautiful. The whole scene down by the water with just Holden and Strasberg and the elderly school teacher and her supposed beau and a bottle of booze is very moving but when Novak glides in, there is magic in the air. Perfectly captured the fated couple come together and we see them glide across the screen, colourful lanterns flickering beyond and Moonglow on the soundtrack. Very fine film, which despite slight casting difficulties, and an element of sentimentality, still manages to punch well above its weight in terms of significance.

Picnic (1955)

A big reputation for a stiff film with some terrific parts. If you start, do stick it out to the night party at the end of the picnic, and to the final emotional scenes. The filming, and even the slightly outrageous Midwest customs (the entire town of people raising their arms in praise at one point), are both great. James Wong Howe knocked himself out making this movie really gorgeous.

If the women (and William Holden) are only as good as they are beautiful, you might say the same with the movie, which is mostly about appearances. Maybe that's part of its brilliance, intended or not. It also might reflect a superficial but partly true version of 1950s America. Or Kansas, for starters. The real intentions here are terrific, and there are elements that begin to draw you in. That is: innocence, striving for happiness, failure (and acceptance of that), and good old carnal lust. I find both Holden and Kim Novak relatively stiff actors, and so maybe they contribute to the feeling in the film. Or maybe they are perfectly cast in a film that doesn't try for honest depth.

It also doesn't try for something truly steamy and emotionally sweeping like a Douglas Sirk film (see his "All that Heaven Allows" from the same year). Director Joshua Logan might actually be striving for something that stays restrained, like the people in the film. Except maybe Rosalind Russell, by the way, who is a genuine hoot.

The famous dance scene on the dock under colored lights makes you nostalgic for some great old times, not quite innocent but certainly pure in their simplicity and beauty. Both leading actors were famously bad dancers, so the camera zooms in to their shoulders on up, letting the ambiance of the night take over, with fifty Chinese lanterns in different colors hovering. Novak plays the "beautiful" one, but her younger sister (Betty Field) has all the pure beauty here, and the conflict lets Holden get confused and torn in two, almost literally (once Russell gets involved). It's all a bit superficial-spotlights (probably some standard studio Kliegs) make it almost absurdly dramatic. But then, we sometimes say that about Sirk, too, and other widescreen dramas of the time. Maybe we'll gradually come not just to enjoy them but to revere them.

For now, there is a bit too much artifice, and bit too little genuine rich depth and human exploration. The material is ripe, for sure. And I have to say I enjoyed it all, without ever quite being convinced or affected.

I love how Joshua Logan's "Picnic", adapted from William Inge's play, uses a picturesque little rural town in Kansas to portray women's situation in the mid-50s. It's as if the film was invented as a time capsule for nostalgics-to-be only to warn them that the good old-fashioned little towns weren't what's it's all cracked up to be. So let's forget a second about William Holden and consider the insightful portrayal of women drawn by "Picnic".

There's the old widow who takes care of his even older mother and is the soothing and comforting voice of wisdom; who would believe she's played by Verna Felton, the voice of two iconic Disney villains: Lady Tremaine and Maleficent. In descending order of age, there's Rosalind Russell as Rosemary, the old spinster who drowns her lost dreams in dark humor hardly concealing her bitterness and who'd give herself away to Harold (Arthur O'Connell), the last man who devotes any interest to her. There's Flo Owens a mother of two daughters and who welcomes her forties as enthusiastically as Margo Channing, building all her remaining hopes on her 19-year old daughter Madge aka the prettiest lady in town.

Played by an ingenue Kim Novak, Madge is the trophy-girl prototype: tall, blonde, feminine, she would have the luxury of choice if it wasn't for the most desirable bachelor Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson) courting her. Same old story, rich boy mates beautiful girl. Madge has every reason to be happy but she's not, tired of being a girl to "look at", a trophy girlfriend, and wishing to be loved for something else than her looks. Still, she couldn't say no because she was coached all her life into using her beauty the wisest way.

Finally, there's Millie, the little sister played by Susan Strasberg, at the cusp of childhood and adulthood, she's the bright bulb, a bookworm who mocks her sister for her prettiness and yet secretly envies her because the boys she supposedly hate don't come at her. Flo accepts Millie's attitude because she doesn't have her sister's assets but the film doesn't go easy on Flo. In a disturbing scene, she almost encourages Madge not to play 'hard to get' for too long. The message is clear and still relevant in our beauty-pageant era: there's a fine line between pampering and pimping that a mother can cross when she's too proud of her daughter's looks. Indeed, beauty isn't just a physical ornament but a social asset.

So much for the clean-cut old-fashioned little town. Inge's material can be as bold as Tennessee Williams' plays but Logan has his share of merit. Providing us almost a quarter-hour of picnic footage from the good old days with pie-eating contests, barbershop quartets, crying babies etc to lure us into a world that's not so clean as it seems. Indeed, when the night falls, couples look for darker spots, and booze start to flow. And in that world of proud values and real temptations, the film offers such a wide range of female types that it's a study converging on one observation: they're either celebrated as mothers, grandmothers, beauty queens and even the old maid has a noble endeavor. All but individuals.

And so it takes an outsider, a man in his mid-thirties to stir up the hornet's nest and reveal the whole hypocrisy. The man is Hal Carter, former college football star who didn't graduate and wondered from job to job until coming to Kansas aboard a freight train to ask his longtime pal Alan to find him a job. It's interesting that he's reaching Alan for the same reason than Flo, if Madge is desired for her looks, Alan is valued for his wallet. And Hal's entrance is interesting, he removes his shirt, harbors a wonderful torso, he looks like a monument to manhood who catches the eye as instantly as Madge does. In a way, he's only loved for his looks while there's warmth and honesty to appreciate. Logan does a great job showing his evolution from a good-looking man to one full of insecurities and whose edifice of confidence is thrown apart where an inebriated Rosemary gives him a long "reasons you suck" speech.

Men get a hard deal in the film: one is loved for his money, another for his looks and the poor Harold is forced to marry Rosemary out of sheer misunderstanding. It's a superficial world where even good things can be done for bad reasons, and so Madge and Hal do the worst possible thing yet for a good reason: being in love. And my question wasn't "why?"; obviously Madge saw in Hal another archetype; one who wasn't obsequious to her looks. Their mutual romance is expressed in the famous dance scene where each one indulges to meaningless moves that exudes sensuality without showing too much. But forgive my puzzlement, I was still wondering on what basis their love existed? Would they last together? What did they know about each other? (Hal spent as much time with Millie).

I felt like Madge went with Hal as a cry of protest, she'd rather take the first stranger than any man from her place... and that man happens not to be bad looking either. Maybe the film would have worked with a less glamorous lead (Holden is a great actor but his looks can't fool us) so there's a feeling of hypocrisy that Ebert spotted in his review and which I'd complete by saying that the Best Picture winner of that year was "Marty", a film about two imperfect people who were perfect one for another and that's what mattered, "Picnic" insists that Hal and Madge must end together because they love each other ... my feeling is that they hated the same things with more passion.

Well, you can build good romances on that. And "Picnic" is certainly one of them, but it's even better as a sociological study about women in traditional America.