Beginning in the reality of American middle-class life, PICNIC portrays the idealistic dream-quest of the protagonist, from which he is finally cast off.Beginning in the reality of American middle-class life, PICNIC portrays the idealistic dream-quest of the protagonist, from which he is finally cast off.Beginning in the reality of American middle-class life, PICNIC portrays the idealistic dream-quest of the protagonist, from which he is finally cast off.
Photos
Isabel Harrington
- The Mother
- (uncredited)
Raymond S. Harrington
- The Father
- (uncredited)
Featured reviews
Another overly dramatic existentialist nonsensical short. Don't waste your time on this nonsense!
Thank goodness it was only 22 minutes. It felt like 2 hours.
Picnic (1948)
*** (out of 4)
Ambitious and surreal short from Curtis Harrington shows an older couple and a younger couple going on a picnic. Once they begin eating the younger man notices a young woman dancing along the beach so he goes to follow her but no matter what he does he can't quite reach her. This film shares a lot in common with the director's FRAGMENT OF SEEKING, which was released two years earlier. In this film the settings have changed from the streets to the beach but both pretty much deal with the same thing. I thought this was a pretty good film, although like many of the director's films, a hundred people could view it and come up with a hundred different explanations as to what is happening. There's some nice atmosphere throughout the film and there's no question that it has a surreal touch to it. Another plus is the nice music score and the cinematography. It should also be worth noting that a Frankenstein like monster appears in the highlight of the film dealing with some stairs. This certainly isn't going to be mistaken for the work of Luis Bunuel but it's worth watching.
*** (out of 4)
Ambitious and surreal short from Curtis Harrington shows an older couple and a younger couple going on a picnic. Once they begin eating the younger man notices a young woman dancing along the beach so he goes to follow her but no matter what he does he can't quite reach her. This film shares a lot in common with the director's FRAGMENT OF SEEKING, which was released two years earlier. In this film the settings have changed from the streets to the beach but both pretty much deal with the same thing. I thought this was a pretty good film, although like many of the director's films, a hundred people could view it and come up with a hundred different explanations as to what is happening. There's some nice atmosphere throughout the film and there's no question that it has a surreal touch to it. Another plus is the nice music score and the cinematography. It should also be worth noting that a Frankenstein like monster appears in the highlight of the film dealing with some stairs. This certainly isn't going to be mistaken for the work of Luis Bunuel but it's worth watching.
As post-war white America was about to enter a phase of conformity and project an image of the clean-cut nuclear family, Curtis Harrington was making shorts like this one, revealing his angst of trying to fit in to that kind of heteronormative world.
The setting is the base of a cliff by the ocean, where a young man is having a picnic with his family. In a dreamlike state, he sees a woman dancing along the shore in the distance, and pursues her. Along the way, he sees a well-dressed man carrying an umbrella and walking in the opposite direction, and is distracted to the point of having the waves wash up over his shoes. As he returns his attention to the young woman, he climbs the cliff, wanders through a barren landscape and then through brambles, and finds her at last. The pair have those whirling moments of connection when you feel when you first fall in love with someone, and yet things soon freeze emotionally, and he remains distracted, the imagery of which is an open umbrella in the swirling mist.
It's a bit like 'Fragment of Seeking' and I suppose it's pretty obvious what Harrington is trying to say, but I'm not sure it was so obvious in 1949, and while Hollywood studios were toeing the line to the reactionary Production Code, to have a film like this made by a 23-year-old is deeply meaningful. I found the imagery in the film at the top of that staircase to be particularly powerful, with the feeling of a spiritual crisis and annihilation of self really coming through. The 22 minute runtime could probably have been tightened up a teeny bit, but be patient with this one, it's worth it.
The setting is the base of a cliff by the ocean, where a young man is having a picnic with his family. In a dreamlike state, he sees a woman dancing along the shore in the distance, and pursues her. Along the way, he sees a well-dressed man carrying an umbrella and walking in the opposite direction, and is distracted to the point of having the waves wash up over his shoes. As he returns his attention to the young woman, he climbs the cliff, wanders through a barren landscape and then through brambles, and finds her at last. The pair have those whirling moments of connection when you feel when you first fall in love with someone, and yet things soon freeze emotionally, and he remains distracted, the imagery of which is an open umbrella in the swirling mist.
It's a bit like 'Fragment of Seeking' and I suppose it's pretty obvious what Harrington is trying to say, but I'm not sure it was so obvious in 1949, and while Hollywood studios were toeing the line to the reactionary Production Code, to have a film like this made by a 23-year-old is deeply meaningful. I found the imagery in the film at the top of that staircase to be particularly powerful, with the feeling of a spiritual crisis and annihilation of self really coming through. The 22 minute runtime could probably have been tightened up a teeny bit, but be patient with this one, it's worth it.
Four people go to the beach to hold a picnic. One of them, a young man, is lured off by a blonde girl dancing in gauzy clothes by the water's edge.
It's not clear what this is about with its assortment of Christ imagery, Frankenstein monster imagery and so forth. There's clearly a psychosexual component to it, but like many works that claim to be "surrealistic", it turns movie-watching into a game of "what number am I thinking of?". My surrealistic reaction is a clip of Artie Johnson in a German military outfit, saying "Very interesting!!"
Which this movie is not.
It's not clear what this is about with its assortment of Christ imagery, Frankenstein monster imagery and so forth. There's clearly a psychosexual component to it, but like many works that claim to be "surrealistic", it turns movie-watching into a game of "what number am I thinking of?". My surrealistic reaction is a clip of Artie Johnson in a German military outfit, saying "Very interesting!!"
Which this movie is not.
Did you know
- TriviaShot in the summer of 1948, it was not scored and fully edited until summer-fall of 1949.
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime
- 22m
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content