Picnic

One of the biggest box-office attractions of the 1950s, Picnic was adapted by Daniel Taradash from the Pulitzer Prize-winning William Inge play. William Holden plays Hal Carter, a handsome drifter who ambles into a small Kansas town during the Labor Day celebration to look up old college chum Alan ...more

Based on a highly acclaimed play and awarded numerous Oscar nominations, Picnic has not aged as well as many other films from the same period. What in 1955 seemed daring and erotic now comes across as overly obvious and frightfully tame, a great deal of much ado about nothing. Worse, the film belies its stage origins, always feeling like a play instead of a movie, despite logical attempts to open it up. Speeches which had a significant impact onstage come across as mannered and artificial, and ...more