Picnic 2

In other words, OP, Madge discovers that her mother was right about everything.

Madge slowly realizes that Hal doesn't really love her. She just reminds him of a young woman he loved and lost. Slowly, he starts to make her over in the image of his late love . . .

^^^^ Thank you, Mr. Stewart. 😲

Made got pregnant, and Hal ran off with some other floozy who won't "try to tie him down". Too embarrassed to go.back to the mother who was right about everything, Madge cleaned out the cash register at the store where she worked, and spent it all on a back-alley abortion and a bus ticket to LA. She turned a few tricks before landing some modeling and film extra work, and married an older cinematographer and settled down to be a respectable housewife.

She retired to San Diego, lives in a nice assisted living place, selling a mid-century house in Burbank means a comfortable old age.

Hal goes to prison for something stupid like stealing cars or assault. Madge is pregnant a goes back to Momma.. I watched it again last night and I am mystified as to WTF Howard saw in Rosemary. Rosalind Russell did a great job. She was so good I wonder if she wasn't acting, just playing herself. Vicious, insecure, obnoxious. She had absolutely no redeeming qualities. And she seemed insane when she went off at the picnic. Seemed like William Holden and Kim Novak were in a different movie.

I think Madge grew frustrated and bored with Hal. She dyed her hair lavender blond, bucked convention and “went black” with a young, gifted and Negro entertainer. Rosemary’s husband splits, but runs into the dejected Hal. They swear off women and screw. Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, the sexually frustrated women’s passion finally explodes upon the young rebellious jerk on the bicycle. The elderly neighbor looks on, waxing romantically about how wonderful it is to have a stud to milk about the house again.

I still can't believe they implied that Madge, the midwest small town princess, lost her cherry to a man in a barn she had known for 12 hours, and it didn't end in some tragedy, but happily (though realistically, it didn't). On one hand it's admirably liberal for those times except for one little thing: for once the mother was right....who goes to live with a loser drifter with no plans who you've known for hours that had the nerve to fuck you on some haystack? I dont care how good the dick was, you don't feel much of anything but pain the 1st time anyway.

Madge's love turns Hal into a man who questions his choices and wants to change. Change doesn't come easily but he goes to AA, gets a job at Sam Loomis' hardware store and starts taking night classes to become an accountant, which he eventually does, becoming very successful. He buys Sam's store and opens several other stores which ultimately takes him and Madge to Pasadena, where they become part of a wealthy circle of entrepeneurs. He does it all for Madge but Madge becomes bored with the demands of society and, frankly, with Hal himself. She wants to run off and LIVE like she did when she left home. And she LIVES by taking on a lover, then another and then another. When Hal finds out he takes a drink and within a week, he becomes a raging alcoholic wreck again. One night, so drunk that he becomes delusional, he goes to the Glendale train station and buys "the most expensive ticket available to the furthest place available." He gets on the train as as the train begins to leave, he sees Madge on the platform looking for him. She runs after the train and he runs to the door, dramatically grabs her hand and pulls her up. Aerial view of the train moving into the sunset.

Having seen this recently can I clear something up? Madge, Millie and Flo lived in the tiny house and went to the Labor Day picnic in a small town in KANSAS. The movie takes place in KANSAS. Grain silos, etc. When Hal jumps on the freight train at the end, after telling Madge he will be at the Hotel Mayo in TULSA, he is heading for Oklahoma.. Later, Madge hops on the bus to join him in TULSA. In OKLAHOMA.

That is all.

Oh. And who ever wrote Kim Novak's dialogue had to have believed her character was almost functionally"slow." Mentally. Very SLOW. Her lines we just terrible, especially in two main scenes: When Hal gets pissed off and leaves the Picnic after Ms. Sidney tears his shirt and accuses him of getting Millie drunk, Madge jumps in the car with him and they go off down by the canal or where ever and she tells him how interesting he is and that he is a quality person. Jesus. My 15 yr old niece can write better dialogue. Then, at the end in their final scene when she doesn't want to look at him or kiss him. Jesus. Did the author create Madge's character to be intellectually "limited?"

Roger Ebert's take is good.

Ebert nailed it , especially " One is that Madge, “tired of only being looked at,” falls instantly for Holden, who only looks at her. "

and

"The movie doesn't have the self-awareness to know that Hal faces the same dilemma as Madge; it's blinded by the fact that he's a man. At the end, he hops a freight to Tulsa, where he'll get a job as a bellboy. Madge rebelliously follows him on the bus . When they get together in Tulsa, they're gonna get mighty tired of only being looked at."

I like the movie just because it's so, well, 1950's and quaint, but the "love story" was for the dogs.

Neewollah!!!!

[quote]Roger Ebert's take is good.

Meh. His usual horseshit.

No one else could have convincingly made the beautiful dumb blonde work except Kim Novak. She conveys innocence, sultriness, and sex all at once. And if anyone is in doubt as to her level of intelligence, she says her lines so convincingly you'd think she wasn't even acting.

"Picnic" was hugely successful. Of course, Roger Ebert wasn't yet offering his commonplace insights on why people shouldn't like it.

R15, of course it was hugely successful. It came out in 1955, and William Holden was still regarded as an A list hottie. It became a classic because IMO it was a sort of visual time capsule of the times. You got the nostalgia and the absurdity of it even 20,30, 40, years later. And Moonglow will always be one of the most romantic songs from a movie. The movie has a theatrical quality and made me wonder if it was a play adapted into film? Something about it reminded me of the 1956 movie Carousel, which was a Broadway musical before it was adapted. Both movies have the unsuitable guy and the sweet girl who loves him anyway.

Milly becomes a serial killer, and her first victim is Bomber.

[quote]The movie has a theatrical quality and made me wonder if it was a play adapted into film?

I guess you didn't watch the opening credits. Yes, it was a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by William Inge.

She becomes pregnant and abandoned. Returns home to: Betty Field telling her nonstop "I told you so!" Her younger sister saying repeatly "Madge is the knocked-up one!" The old maid schoolteacher nagging at her new husband if he isn't constantly paying attention to her while she ogles any shirtless male and remarking how they are "naked as an Indian". Neighbor Verna Felton's mother still whining at her: "Hellllllllllllllllen!"

Madge gets knocked up by Hal, but he becomes a drunk and cheats on her with a floozy waitress, she goes back home and manages to convince rich guy Alan into a shotgun wedding ans passing the kid off as his, they marry, have a fairly mediocre marriage, but manage to last.

R20 it work better if Alan is in the closet. Gay, Gay, Gay! And he had the hots for Hal in college.

He looks old enough to be her father.

I always felt William Holden was way too old to play the part of Hal and that Kim Novak was too old for Madge.

[quote]He looks old enough to be her father.

And tall enough to be her mother.

Wil-I mean Hal gets drunk one night and falls and hits his head, passes out and bleeds to death. Madge gets bad cosmetic surgery.

[R15]: “Picnic” was indeed a hit play on Broadway in 1953, running for 477 performances, and even won closeted gay author William Inge the Pulitzer Prize. Hunky Ralph Meeker played Hal, while Paul Newman made his Broadway debut as Alan. (Newman also understudied Meeker, and later took on the role after Meeker departed.)

Considering author Inge’s gayness, I’ve often thought the character of Howard is really likewise closeted. There’s a scene in the film version where Howard gives Hal a ride in his car, and the conversation between them seems to have gay implications. I’ve no doubt that Hal in his wanderings has had experience as a hustler. (Inge was known to include hunky male characters in most of his plays, who invariably are seen for their sexual attraction.)

The 1950’s in the U.S. was an era of witch hunts, including gay men, hounded and persecuted. Inge himself was tormented, and later committed suicide. So Howard marries to mask his real urges.

Hal is an oblivious user, taking what he can from whatever admirers he can find. He will not age well, if he lives that long. Madge is a romantic victim in training, who will probably age into perpetual resentment, smoking and drinking her way into medical complications. Even the smart younger sister can never completely divest herself of family issues, which will block her from achievement.

Except for the memorable dance scene, I’ve always found the movie of “Picnic” too simplistic, full of stereotypes. The movie adds a central actual picnic sequence, not in the play, which now seems anachronistic for its almost total absence of any black people, underscoring an unspoken racist complacency, rife in the 1950’s. It’s entirely likely that later productions would be racially mixed, though that would seem unreal for the historical period.

"... a central actual picnic sequence, not in the play, which now seems anachronistic for its almost total absence of any black people"

Oh, I can believe that in a small Midwestern town in the 1950s, the black residents would know they weren't welcome at the big community picnic. Or knew that they wouldn't be safe.

Yes, R27 it was set in Kansas in the early 50's. Very well said, R26.