PICNIC

An iconic image from Picnic by James Wong Howe

PICNIC (1956). Director: Joshua Logan. NOTE: Logan also directed the stage play. This review gives away some important plot points.

Hal Carter (William Holden) is a drifter and failed, wannabee actor who winds up in Kansas where he looks up an old buddy named Alan (Cliff Robertson), hoping to find work. Alan's father gives Hal a job, but things are complicated at the Labor Day picnic when Hal and Alan's fiancee, Madge (Kim Novak), find themselves attracted to one another. Alan is furious, but Madge's mother (Betty Field) is horrified at the fate in store for her daughter if she runs off with Hal. Meanwhile Madge's younger sister, Millie (Susan Strasberg), is suffering growing pains, and their border, spinster schoolteacher Rosemary (Rosalind Russell), is having a crisis of her own.

William Holden and Kim Novak

Picnic is based on the Pulitzer prize-winning stage play by William Inge, and screenwriter Daniel Taradash has intelligently opened up the drama without apparently losing much of the original's meat. Both of the two leads, Holden and Novak, are too old for their roles -- Novak was twenty-three and Holden thirty-eight looking older -- and Holden is really not the right type for Hal at all, but he still manages to give quite a good performance, as does Novak, whom I've always believed could be quite accomplished with the right role and director. Betty Field and Susan Strasberg score as mother and younger daughter, and Rosalind Russell, while she tends to overplay in some sequences, has a terrific moment when she's begging her steady beau, Howard (Arthur O'Connell, carried over from the stage version), to marry her. Cliff Robertson gives one of his best performances as Alan, a nice guy who is treated badly even as he treats Hal badly out of jealousy. There are also nice turns by Verna Felton (the tough maid on I Love Lucy) as a very sympathetic neighbor who takes to Hal right off the bat, and Reta Shaw and Phyllis Newman in smaller roles.

William Holden

Just as straight writers composed stories that revolved around female objects of desire, some gay writers did the same thing with male figures as the centerpiece. Tennessee Williams comes to mind with his "Orpheus Descending," which debuted on the stage four years after Picnic (although Williams' first version, "Band of Angels," dates back to 1940. Meanwhile "Orpheus" was filmed as The Fugitive Kind with Marlon Brando three years after Picnic hit screens.) Both Picnic and Fugitive Kind deal with sexy bad boys and drifters who burst into town and inflame passions among women; the plays and movies were too soon before Stonewall to deal upfront with any gay influences. This is not to say that the characters were all meant to be male.

Rosalind Russell and William Holden

However, both plays have more on their minds than just virile rough trade. Picnic is basically a study of small-town desperation and loneliness; the film has persistent undercurrents of both. It is made clear that Hal is just as lonely in his own way as Rosemary is, culminating in a painful sequence when Rosemary humiliates Hal after he, in her mind, rejects her advances. The film also looks at the pain of growing older and the anguished jealousy it can engender when a middle-aged person is confronted by someone with youth and promise and more overt attractiveness and sensuality.

Cliff Robertson and William Holden

Picnic has many memorable sequences. There is the amusing montage of scenes at the picnic, with crying babies, cute dogs, and silly games, and -- in contrast -- the sort of sexy slow dance that Hal and Madge do together on the bandstand. James Wong Howe's cinematography is outstanding, and George Duning has contributed a sensitive score. Picnic has to be considered an anti-romantic film. Playwright Inge probably meant the ending to indicate that Madge is giving full range to her feelings and taking a chance on life and love and perhaps getting away from a stifling small-town environment, but in the bittersweet conclusion she's also going off with a man she has known for only one day. (Paging Dr. Phil!) And does anyone really think the relationship between Rosemary and Howard will work?

The play starred Ralph Meeker as Hal, Paul Newman as Alan, Janice Rule as Madge, Eileen Heckart as Rosemary, and Arthur O'Connell as Howard. Aron Copeland's beautiful opera The Tender Land, which debuted around the same time as the stage version of Picnic, also dealt with a young woman who falls in love overnight with a drifter and wants to run away with him.

Verdict: Despite some problems, this is an excellent picture. ***1/2.