I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This film couldn't have been made in any other decade but the 50's. Filmed in the elongated, vividly coloured wide-screen CinemaScope style of the day, it must have looked great on the big screen in the movie palaces back then. I also suspect it couldn't have been made in any other decade with its emergent adult themes in the wake of the revolution wrought by the success of "A Streetcar Named Desire". Itself based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, it's a tale of small-town ambitions, nascent sexuality and family conflict, triggered by William Holden's rebellious drifter arriving in town to shake up the locals and stir up a hornet's nest of emotions in his wake. The centrepiece of the film is the town's annual picnic where everyone attends what's more like an outdoor festival culminating in the crowning of a young beauty as the "Neewollah Queen".Principal amongst those affected by Holden's arrival is a struggling single-parent family of a middle-aged mother fonder of her younger, more intelligent but also rebellious, tomboyish daughter Millie who's into smoking, reading modern literature and against being cast as a conventional "lace and curls" young girl. Her older sister Madge, played by Kim Novak in her breakthrough role is the town beauty, soon to be the Neewollah Queen, just entering womanhood, but stereotypically assumed to be shallow and dumb, groomed by her mother into marriage with Cliff Robertson as the handsome but dull son of the local business tycoon, owner of the town's grain mills. When Holden turns up unannounced to stay next door with the family's good-natured elderly neighbour and later proposition old college chum Robertson for a job, sparks fly and conventions are broken over the course of the big picnic day. There's a sub-plot involving Rosalind Russell's ageing spinster teacher who initially scorns her boring middle-aged wooer Howard, but her emotions too get heightened by Holden's arrival turning her into a simpering, desperate man-eating woman who'll do anything to avoid being left on the shelf.Partly because of the second-hand nature of the plot, as a film it doesn't grab the viewer the way "Streetcar" did. Worse, Holden is several years too old for his part, looking positively fatherly in his scenes with Novak and even Robertson (not helped by both of them looking so young) and certainly doesn't possess the rebelliousness or physicality of Brando, his shirtless introduction at the start of the film only emphasising the point. Novak however is excellent as the awakening young girl who eventually rejects her stereotyping as the dim-witted beauty and shoo-in dutiful wife-to-be of Robertson. Russell was much praised at the time for her role as the frustrated teacher but I couldn't quite follow her character's reverse development, even if it is clearly set out as the opposite of the younger Novak's journey to a more-rewarding self-expression, plus the old-dear overacts for Kansas.For me the only time the film really came alive was in the celebrated dance scene at the picnic when Novak is first drawn to Holden, although its unquestionably her sexuality and sexiness which powers the scene. The direction by Joshua Logan, is only stolid however and while it features the famous helicopter high-aspect shot at the end in a rare moment of imagination, at other times there are some jarringly bad edits, most obviously in the intimate scenes between Novak and Holden and Russell and her man.One can only imagine what a Brando or Dean might have made of Holden's part but the film fails to compensate for this fatal casting error and correspondingly must be judged a failure.

Where is MST3K when you need it? "Picnic" had me resurrecting this late 80s fad: Conflicted belle shirks marrying for money for a deeper passion - NOT! Irrestible 20-something drops out of college and out of his boxcar into the roiling undercurrents of a... picnic - NOT! Gracefully aging spinster displays resilience and inner strength grappling with the gender roles of her day - TRIPLE NOT! Holden's bluster and swagger had me wanting a film noir ending of some sort. He looks ruggedly hot as usual, but nowhere near the age he's supposed to be. Bogie could have been cast to similar effect.Novak expressionlessly drones about being tired of being looked at, only to throw over the local nice guy for a booty call with a sexy dancer she has known for all of six hours - the sort of charmer with lines like "you asked for it".She's egged on in her non-mutual romance by her social-climbing mother, who in countering Novak's objection that she is only nineteen, displays a knack for non-linear mathematics: "Next year you'll be 20, then 21, and then...40!"The movie never succeeds in making us care for the main characters. There is an attempt at exploring Holden's inner conflict, but in the balance of things, he's more creepy than compelling, while Novak wins the Oscar for "Best Blank Expression" in most scenes. But Russell's "spinster school marm" performance is the nadir of the whole affair. Acting with all the poise of a tipsy Old West bar maid, she literally rips Holden's shirt off in public then (also literally) throws herself at a long-time boyfriend the next morning. And when, implausibly, he goes through with the ceremony, she sticks her tongue out at the school on the way by.The only likable character is the ditched boyfriend. What is so repellent to Novak's character? He's cute, nice, rich and until the picnic, has even settled for kissing when they park. More to the point, he is going out with her against his father's wishes and stands up to the old man about it.At least I came away with some ideas for my next picnic, like the octogenarian balloon blowing contest. I'll have to watch that scene again, it was an emotional high point.

Picnic: Never saw it when it came out. Saw Kim Novak on special TCM interview show this week, she of 80 years and still looking wonderful. I DVR'd Picnic, and of course marveled at how young she was at the time this movie was made. No white hair for Kim. Her hair is still a beautiful blonde, and her 2012 clothing in the interview was very stylish.Holden looking wonderful. So what if he was so much older. Alan was his age, and nobody asked how many years after his college graduation. Holden a bum, a loser, with juvenile delinquent record must have been somewhat attractive qualities for Novak, since all she had to compare was goofy rich guy Alan or stupid paperboy Nick Adams.Susan Strasberg couldn't fool her mother with that smoking. Betty Field made a nice mother, and I remember her as Cassandra Tower from Kings Row. Mrs. Potts was very nice, and accepted Holden as he was, not comparing him to some local hometown Romeo.Kings Row was a small town where bad things happened. So was Peyton Place. So was Harmony on TV's Passions. Remember River City, Iowa, in the Music Man? River City's 'crimes' included things such as 'reading a dime novel in the corn crib.' Indeed, small town America has lots of shouldn'ts and secrets, and absolutely everyone knows everyone else's business. We have a particular small town in our state where people left their doors unlocked only ten years ago, but now their minimal crime leads to locked doors.Picnic was where a hot hunk, invited, arrives courtesy of a freight car, into a town in the middle of nowhere and proceeds to take the most beautiful young woman away from the high-rolling scion of the town's wealthy leader. During the actual picnic itself, food and desserts are only the precursors of the steamy evening to come.The Rosalind Russell part was way overdone. She was so desperate. Arthur O'Connell was probably married to his mother, and Roz must have ended up being a very shrewish daughter-in-law, if the mother was still alive. Roz begging Arthur to marry her was so corny, uncomfortable, stupid and dumb. She should have stayed on at the school, where at least the children may have returned her affections. Sticking out her tongue as she departed the school was the most terrible thing I saw her do. It's bye-bye lowly school paycheck, and hello O'Connell's self-employed monthly stipend with probably poverty for Roz and scrubbing those floors on her hands and knees to keep in favor with him -- since apparently he had no passion for her.

Corny, old-fashioned, silly, heavy-handed moral messages, obvious…yet it's still masterful. It is one of those pieces that is somehow separate from the sum of its parts. Does it even make sense that something this dated is still this great? Actually, it does. Despite a few very glaring flaws, the film is able to triumph over these setbacks and be great. Let us start with the cinematography, it is only second to perfection. Each scene has just the right amount of touch, just the right amount of editing, and just immaculate framing of shots. It is not some pretend to be great cinematography with amazing exotic landscapes or special effects or anything like that. It is technical diligence where whichever shot is required, be it wide shot, medium shot, two-shot or whatever, it is delivered. Each and every time. This is a film somehow directed to perfection (san the river bank scene, haha). I could continue on about the movie, how things are not preach, but thorough and purposeful, or how it doesn't have to try hard to be stylish, but succeeds in drawing you to its own world,or through all its unlikeliness offers very effective storytelling… but I'd like to keep this review in the same light as the movie…Trite, but true. So, if you are looking for an underrated and overlooked classic, skip "Night of the Hunter" and watch this. 9/10