Picnic | | Cast : | William Holden, Kim Novak | | Director : | Joshua Logan | | Studio : | Columbia/Tristar Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | January 01, 1955 | | DVD Released Date : | April 18, 2000 | | Language : | Portuguese (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), Thai (Subtitled), Chinese (Subtitled), Korean (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 28, 2005 | | Summary | sexy and sweet | Content
 | In Kim Novak's first major film, the viewer is treated to a beautiful ingenue--completely sweet and innocent. William Holden is the perfect drifter--mysterious and incredibly sexy. When they meet, the chemistry is immistakable and nothing can stop them from consummating their attraction. This film was very progressive for the time it was made, but is quite tame by today's standards. The dance scene is unforgettable, and the supporting actors are memorable.
The best part of this film is the ending, because even then you are not certain what will become of these two people and their future. I especially enjoy films that linger with you after viewing them, and this is one that does. If you are at all a romantic, this is a great film for you.
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| Rating | | | Date | April 09, 2005 | | Summary | A Great Story that mirrors the human condition | Content
| I first saw Picnic in the mid seventies as a young teen. I was a little young to understand the romantic entanglements at that age but I've watched this movie repeatedly through the years and the characters have become more three dimensional, their motivations more clear with each watching.
I think most everyone can find a piece of themselves in Hal (the drifter who boasts to conceal his shyness and feelings of worthlessness), Millie (the brainy younger sister of Madge who feels overshadowed by her beautiful sister), Mrs. Potts (who no doubt wished for romance and family as a young woman but found herself tied to an invalid mother), Miss Sydney (the old maid school teacher whose clock is ticking and who is growing more desparately lonely with each new school year). Even Madge's mother, who finds herself a bit flattered on her first introduction to Hal, is somewhat sympathetic. She, herself, fell for a charasmatic charmer, only to be left behind by his drinking and womanizing. She's allowed herself to harden through the years, seeing young Mr. Benson and his wealth as a way out for her daughter, Madge. I admit, I've seen this movie so many times, I mouth the dialogue along with the characters. When Madge's mother is consoling her, explaining her protectiveness towards Millie, I fairly scream, "Don't you see...I'm trying to make up for all those golden years you had that she didn't." So...spread out a blanket, gather up the tissues and prepare for a sweet and bittersweet summer Picnic. |
| Rating | | | Date | January 22, 2005 | | Summary | Beautiful film. Still, please read and/or watch the play, | Content
| Picnic
~ Joshua Logan
If one has never read, seen, or been involved in producing William Inge's original stage script, PICNIC, as a film, is a lush, beautifully photographed, solidly acted and well scored motion picture.
However if one is familiar with the play, the film's free adaption does change much of the immediacy and intimacy of the story. And maybe not always necessarily for the better.
One of the central problems facing a producing team in bringing a stage play to life is deciding what to do about setting. Many plays occur in a single unit setting, thereby hemming the characters in a very confined space, thusly raising the emotional stakes. That limited setting and the related lush dialouge often translates rather flatly on film.
Joshua Logan and his production crew chose to open the play up and use some very picturesque settings and stagings. The picnic of the title, really a red herring in the play, takes center stage here in the film and becomes a wonderful Paganesque fertility rite (hear vividly captured in this well-struck DVD).
This choice does make for some beautiful sights and sounds, but rather dilutes the dramatic intensity that drives Inge's central narrative. Again, if one is not familiar with the play, this will not make any difference.
Much has been already written about William Holden being perhaps too old for the part of Hal-a supposed twenty-something drifter. His fine acting ability really makes it a moot point unless of course in the scenes where he is supposed to be dating the teenage Millie (Susan Strassberg)and then it really seems rather "icky".
It could of course all add up to justifying Hal's attraction to the fertility goddess that is Madge. Holden's boyish athleticism and boundless energy makes his Hal the perfect archetypal warrior.
Kim Novack was never better as the awakening Midwestern Venus, rising out of our collective unconsciousness, that is Madge Owens. Her beauty is earthy and classic. Visually, Logan has done wonders making Hal and Madge fated into connecting. They will be responsible for regenerating the country.
Of course the film is underwritten when compared to the play. Several post romantic scenes simply do not contain the emotional power and poignancy that they do on stage. Inge's play-about choices and consequences and the severity of those choices is rather lost in the translation to film. Lost too somewhat is the painfull longing and loneliness that permeates so much of Inge's finest work.
All in all, PICNIC is a fine film. Perhaps one of the finer products to come out of the mainstream Hollywood studios of the 1950's. My suggestion is watch and enjoy the movie and, when given the chance, go see the stage version. Inge's play is one of the finest ever written. It is an American classic
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| Rating | | | Date | May 06, 2004 | | Summary | Holden Sparks, Novak Smolders, Kansas Burns | Content
| In a decade of conformity and great prosperity William Inge and Tennessee 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. 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. 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. 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 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.
Rosalind Russell nearly steals the show as the fourth woman in the Owens household boarder, Rosemary, 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.
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 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. That screen door is a firewall protecting her from the flames. 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 when Hal 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 fading glow of his golden boy charm and his muscular magnetism. Holden was 35 when he made Picnic, a real 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 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. 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. |
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