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From the opening, iconic shots of a hunky William Holden parading half-naked around the picket-fenced gardens of a repressed Midwest community, Picnic establishes itself as potentially explosive mix of boiling sexuality and strangulating, small-town social mores. Indeed, the film's introduction of Holden as Hal - a cocky but fading drifter, looking to hook up with rich college buddy Alan and become a 'respectable' 9-to-5 guy - is almost provocative in its homoeroticism. Stripped to the waist, tanned and lean, Hal shines in the sunlight like a bronze statue, upsetting the quiet restraint of the Norman Rockwell milieu with a blatant, masculine sexuality that catches both men and women off-guard.
Hal's brawny charm soon registers on the radars of the film's principal women: young tomboy Millie, shrill spinster Rosemary and, with destructive results, Millie's beauty queen sister Madge (Kim Novak). Tension comes to a head during the leisurely Labor Day picnic, a marathon event that begins with games and ends with booze-fuelled hysterics. Choreographed with visual and narrative virtuosity, the lush widescreen cinematography prettifies yet also underlines the heated passions running just beneath the story.

 

Julian Upton on 9th June 2006
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