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''Picnic'' is a 1955 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film in Cinemascope,〔''Variety'' film review; December 7, 1955, p.8〕〔''Harrison's Reports'' film review; December 10, 1955, p.198〕 which was adapted for the screen by Daniel Taradash from William Inge's 1953 Pulitzer Prize winning play.〔 Joshua Logan, director of the original Broadway stage production, also directed the film version, which stars William Holden and Kim Novak, with Rosalind Russell, Susan Strasberg and Cliff Robertson in a supporting roles. ''Picnic'' was nominated for six Academy Awards and won two. The film dramatizes 24 hours in the life of a small Kansas town in the mid-20th-century United States. It revolves around the Labor Day holiday, the traditional end of summer vacations in America, after which people must return to school or work and face up to the challenges in their lives. It is the story of the proverbial outsider who blows into town and subsequently manages to overturn complacency, shake convention, disrupt and rearrange lives and reset the fates of all those with whom he comes into contact. ==Plot== Hal Carter (William Holden) is a former college football star, adrift and unemployed after army service and a failed Hollywood acting career. On Labor Day (September 5, 1955), he arrives by freight train in a Kansas town to visit his fraternity friend, Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson), the son of a wealthy grain elevator owner, Mr. Benson (Raymond Bailey). Working for his breakfast by doing chores in the backyard of kindly Mrs. Potts (Verna Felton), Hal presents() to Bomber (Nick Adams), Madge Owens (Kim Novak), her sister Millie (Susan Strasberg), and her mother (Betty Field). The later is hoping Madge will marry Alan, which would thus raise both Madge and herself into the town's highest, respectable social circles. Alan wants to marry Madge, but his father thinks she is beneath him. Madge, even when being Alan fiancé, doesn't really love Alan and is weary of being liked only because she is pretty. Hal gets along wonderfully with almost everyone, and tries very hard to be accepted. Alan is very happy to see "same old Hal", whom he takes to the family's sprawling grain elevator operations. He promises Hal a steady job as a "wheat scooper" (though Hal has unrealistic expectations of becoming an executive, and is disappointed) and invites Hal to swim and the town's Labor Day picnic. Hal is wary about going to the picnic, but Alan nudges him into it, saying Hal's "date" for the picnic will be Madge's bookish younger sister Millie (Susan Strasberg), who is quickly drawn to Hal's cheerful demeanor and charisma. On the way to the picnic Alan reassures Mrs. Owens that although Hal flunked out of college and lost his football scholarship because he did not study, there are no worries about him. The afternoon carries on very happily, until Hal starts talking about himself too much and Alan stops him with cutting remarks, everyone realizes Hal and Madge like each other. As the sun goes down, everyone wanders off. Millie draws a sketch of Hal and tells him she secretly writes poetry. Hal's behavior towards her is friendly and utterly trustworthy, but his replies show he has no understanding or interest of her world at all. Despite that Millie gets fund of him. Madge is named the town's annual Queen of Neewollah ("Halloween" spelled backwards), and Hal longingly gazes at her as she is brought down the river in a swan-shaped pedal-boat. They shyly say "Hi" to each other as she glides by. Middle-aged schoolteacher Rosemary (Rosalind Russell), who rents a room at the Owens house, has been brought to the picnic by store owner Howard Bevens (Arthur O'Connell), both of them had been drinking whisky all the afternoon. When the band plays dance music, Howard says he can't dance, so Rosemary dances with Millie. Hal and Howard then start dancing together, which nettles Rosemary. She grabs madly Howard, who then dances with her. Hal tries to show Millie a dance he learned in LA to the Moonglow standard, but Millie can not quite get the beat. Madge stumbles upon them, seductively transforming the moves Hal is showing Millie, and sways toward him, thus initiating a dance with him in which they are both become increasingly mesmerized. Millie, having been cast aside and ignored by both Rosemary and Hal, sulks off and starts drinking from the whiskey bottle hidden in Howard's jacket. Rosemary, drunk from the same whiskey, jealously breaks up the dance between Madge and Hal. Rosemary flings herself at Hal, saying he reminds her of a Roman gladiator. When Hal tries to ward off the schoolteacher, she rips his shirt then bitterly calls him a bum. Mrs. Owens and Alan show up and think Hal has caused a messy scandal, made all the worse when Millie breaks down, screaming, "Madge is the pretty one!" and becomes ill from the whiskey. Rosemary, still blinded by her anger, tells Mrs. Owens that Hal gave Millie the whiskey, while Howard's plea that ''he'' brought the whiskey seems to fall on deaf ears. Alan blames Hal of the mess and telling he is ashamed he had brought Hal in the first place. By now a crowd is watching, and Hal flees into the darkness. Madge follows Hal to Alan's car ashamed of Alan and Rosemary behavior and gets in with him. He angrily tells her to go home. However, she won't budge, so he drives off with her to town. By the river he tells her he was sent to reform school as a boy for stealing a motorcycle and that his whole life is a failure. Madge kisses Hal, which astonishes him and he responds. Later outside Madge's house, they kiss goodbye and promise to meet after she gets off work at six the next evening. Hal drives back to Alan's house to return the car, but Alan has called the police and wants Hal arrested. After trying to talk things out, Alan physically attacks Hal, Hal fights back against Alan and the two police officers. Hal flees the house in Alan's car with the police following close behind. Leaving the car back by the river, Hal goes into the water, gets away from them and shows up at Howard's apartment, asking to spend the night there. Howard is very understanding and now has his own worries: a highly distraught, desperate and remorseful Rosemary has begged him to marry her and never return but to marry her. Back at the Owens house, Madge and Millie cry themselves to sleep in their shared room. The next morning, Howard comes to the Owens house, intending to tell Rosemary he wants to wait, but at the sight of him she becomes overjoyed, thinking he has come to take her away. Flustered in front of the whole household and other schoolteachers, Howard wordlessly goes along with this. As he passes Madge on the stairs, he tells her Hal is hiding in the backseat of his car. Hal is able to slip away before the other women gleefully paint and attach streamers and tin cans to Howard's car, throwing rice and asking him where he'll take Rosemary for their honeymoon. As Howard and Rosemary happily drive off to the Ozarks, Hal and Madge meet by a shed behind the house. He tells her that he loves her and asks her to meet him in Tulsa, where they can marry and where he can get a room and a job at a hotel as a bellhop and elevator operator. Mrs. Owens finds them by the shed and threatens to call the police. Madge and Hall embrace and kiss. Hal runs to catch a passing freight train, crying out to Madge, "You love me! You love me!" Upstairs in their room, Millie tells Madge to "do something bright" for once in her life and go to Hal. Madge packs a small suitcase and, despite her mother's tears (but also nudged on by Mrs. Potts), boards a bus for Tulsa.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Picnic (1955 film)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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