Picnic

Picnic (1955) is Joshua Logan's romantic drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Drawn from William Inge's Pulitzer-winning play, it handed William Holden and Kim Novak two of their most quietly charged early roles.

It's Labor Day in a small Kansas town. A drifter named Hal Carter swings off a freight car to look up Alan, an old college friend and son of the richest man around. At the holiday picnic Hal meets Madge, the town beauty and Alan's girl, and over one sweltering afternoon the whole settled order starts to crack. Rosalind Russell, as an aging schoolteacher, turns loneliness into something almost too raw to watch.

The film picked up two Oscars, for art direction and for editing, and still reads as one of the most sensual American dramas of the decade. That slow dance between Holden and Novak to 'Moonglow' long ago became a piece of movie history. A slow-burning, grown-up story about longing and missed chances. Stream Picnic (1955) online on iFILM.