野餐

野餐Picnic (1955)

霍尔登拍摄时他都37了肚子都出来了，还各种果戏，根本就不适合这部电影的角色20多岁的年轻小伙，抬头纹都重得都能夹死苍蝇了，和金诺瓦克也是全程尬演，看起来就无比的尬。当时霍尔登因为想结束与哥伦比亚的合约就接了这部电影，据说只拿了三万美元片酬，而以他当时的水准30万片酬是完全可以的。 原舞台剧剧本就应该修改一下。电影角色设定霍尔登饰演的Hal就应该变成一个三十多一事无成但是因为帅气的外表依然散发着成熟魅力的中年混混，前来投奔多年未联系的大学好友。金诺瓦克的角色可以设定成剧中Hal的好友叛逆的侄女类似的角色，然后那个小女孩的角色就设定成好友的女儿，这样一来青春少女叛逆追寻中年大叔这样的剧本放在当时还不惊艳四座。最好再加一点角色的内心戏，什么hal年轻时在好莱坞被潜规则啊之类的，年纪大了不比年轻时做小白脸逃离了好莱坞。金诺瓦克的戏份再加些家庭伦理冲突之类的，关键金诺瓦克就不会表演，好莱坞有史以来最大的花瓶，就怕她演不来。 这部电影据我推测本身是像模仿伊甸园之东这种设定的，讲的还是一个自我实现自我追寻得故事，Hal这个角色厌恶自己的不成熟，一事无成，金诺瓦克想摆脱自己的重复无趣的生活，想要自己为自己做出决定。两个人走到一起，逃离这个小镇。电影还有个点就是小镇中刻画的几对情侣夫妻，他们的结合却与爱情无关，而电影最终金诺瓦克的角色抛弃了理智，选择追寻自己的内心的爱情。这种对比的结果电影就完全没拍出来这种感觉，怎么最后就成了一个小镇上的女人们因为一个魅力十足的单身汉而陷入骚动？电影的结果是不美好的，因为男女主的性格上都有缺陷，所以即便两人最终走在一起，肯定也是不会幸福的。

A major Oscar contender (6 nominations including BEST PICTURE, DIRECTOR, with two wins), PICNIC derives from William Inge’s Pulitzer-winning eponymous play and this celluloid adaptation is also directed by its original Broadway helmer Joshua Logan, lensed by James Wong Howe in the expansive Technicolor and Cinemascope, prominently for its ending aerial shot, an avant-garde bravura of its time. The titular picnic takes place on the Labor Day, a drifter Hal Carter (Holden) blows in a sleepy Kansas town to seek out his former college roommate Alan Benson (Robertson), whose father owns the local grain business. But when his eyes catch those of Madge Owens (Novak), Alan’s 19-year-old girlfriend and the prettiest girl in the town, like struck by lightning, within a 24-hour span, their life will be eternally altered. It is a fish out of water scenario, peaked in the college, Hal was a football star passé, and hasn’t made good once out of the ivory tower, still possessing a jock physique (at the age of 37, merely two years younger than Betty Field, who plays Madge’s single mother, Holden is on the wrong side of Hal’s youthfulness and rather strains to sham that semblance), he is prone to take off his shirt at the drop of a hat, oozing raw sexual appeal that is much of a change in the eyes of the womenfolk, including Madge, her younger, bookish sister Millie (Strasberg), and Rosemary Sydney (Russell), the maiden schoolteacher. A rumbustious picnic follows, Logan marshals an appreciatively large number of extras to show off the down-home jollification, everyone has a whale of a time, even Hal seems to integrate into the chipper mass, yet, small talk can touch a raw nerve when his rodomontade is punctured by Alan’s brusque remarks, he is an outsider, a loser who hasn’t achieved anything, a bum with a cap in hand. That said, the potency of his outward virility becomes an ravishing draw of the opposite side, to Millie, he epitomizes the ideal manhood that stirs her adolescent feelings; to Rosemary, he reminds her of what she misses in a man and someone whom she can only abjectly desire in vain, since her bloom is long off the rose; but to Madge, they strike as a perfect match, their affections are mutual, only will she give up a financially secured life to explore an alternative one of uncertainty, what brings them together is elemental passion, but does that make for a viable ballast for a lifelong commitment, that is the sticking point here, and PICNIC certainly sticks to its guns on that matter, even Madge’s final change of mind is too contrived and entirely impractical under that circumstances (for a play it works because of the urgency to reach the finish line, whereas in a film, it is almost too blatant a wish fulfillment to wrap things up with such hurriedness). While an avuncular O’Connell receives the sole Oscar nomination among the cast - who plays Howard Bevans, the reluctant groom-to-be of Rosemary, with wonderful easement at first, then adroitly segues into more poignant and bemusing parts - there are plenty meritorious performance here: Field viscerally interprets a mother’s trepidation and fatality; Novak, in her star-making turn, counterintuitively renders Madge a tardiness, a tentativeness, an evasiveness that may give way to her limited chops, but it is so befitting to a nymphet who grows sick of being only seen for her outward beauty. Albeit being miscast, a rip-roaring Holden manfully offsets the disadvantage with mettle and exertion, his Hal is a rough diamond of sort who treads water for his inability and operates on primordial impulse that any viewer can intuit that the prospect of him and Madge is not propitious, but that is exactly the point, shall we root for a doomed affair just because the heart wants what it wants? Lastly, should Russell have deigned to campaign in the supporting actress category, history would’ve been rewritten in terms of the belonging of that golden statuette, her Rosemary is a revelation who tears into the most painful truth of a spinster’s dreadful fix, we are transfixed to dread her one-sided matrimonial bubble will burst once she stops dead in the hoopla near the end, Russell perseveres with a pained dignity and beams with a broad smile with gallons of emotion bottled up beneath. referential entries: Joshua Logan’s SAYONARA (1957, 7.4/10); Daniel Mann’s COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA (1952, 7.7/10).