ShangLuda Admirable film.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

secondtake Picnic (1955) A big reputation for a stiff film with some terrific parts. If you start, do stick it out to the night party at the end of the picnic, and to the final emotional scenes. The filming, and even the slightly outrageous Midwest customs (the entire town of people raising their arms in praise at one point), are both great. James Wong Howe knocked himself out making this movie really gorgeous. If the women (and William Holden) are only as good as they are beautiful, you might say the same with the movie, which is mostly about appearances. Maybe that's part of its brilliance, intended or not. It also might reflect a superficial but partly true version of 1950s America. Or Kansas, for starters. The real intentions here are terrific, and there are elements that begin to draw you in. That is: innocence, striving for happiness, failure (and acceptance of that), and good old carnal lust. I find both Holden and Kim Novak relatively stiff actors, and so maybe they contribute to the feeling in the film. Or maybe they are perfectly cast in a film that doesn't try for honest depth. It also doesn't try for something truly steamy and emotionally sweeping like a Douglas Sirk film (see his "All that Heaven Allows" from the same year). Director Joshua Logan might actually be striving for something that stays restrained, like the people in the film. Except maybe Rosalind Russell, by the way, who is a genuine hoot. The famous dance scene on the dock under colored lights makes you nostalgic for some great old times, not quite innocent but certainly pure in their simplicity and beauty. Both leading actors were famously bad dancers, so the camera zooms in to their shoulders on up, letting the ambiance of the night take over, with fifty Chinese lanterns in different colors hovering. Novak plays the "beautiful" one, but her younger sister (Betty Field) has all the pure beauty here, and the conflict lets Holden get confused and torn in two, almost literally (once Russell gets involved). It's all a bit superficial-spotlights (probably some standard studio Kliegs) make it almost absurdly dramatic. But then, we sometimes say that about Sirk, too, and other widescreen dramas of the time. Maybe we'll gradually come not just to enjoy them but to revere them. For now, there is a bit too much artifice, and bit too little genuine rich depth and human exploration. The material is ripe, for sure. And I have to say I enjoyed it all, without ever quite being convinced or affected.

Kirpianuscus a small town. an old friendship. a dramatic love story . a picnic as axis. a film who remains, after decades, example of freshness. for the splendid performance of William Holden , in a role who remands James Dean's characters, for the first role of Cliff Robertson who does a great job and, sure, for Kim Novak. the precise exploration of details, the manner to present the state of an age/condition/status of each character, for the atmosphere and for the wise art to use the clash between meetings are the virtues of a beautiful film, useful lesson for rediscover the old fashion cinema's high convincing art. a film about need of certitude, it has the gift to remain memorable. and one of movies who are best choice for understand the reflection in cinema of the strange air of South.

jc-osms 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.

deadbunny28 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