Silver Screen in a Red Envelope: A Diary of Time Wasted

 I giggle to think that this film is an Academy Award winner, and Stephen has to watch it. My review and opinions of this film are heavily influenced by the review at  http://www.emanuellevy.com/review/picnic-1955-8/ The movie, from moment one, struck me mostly as something culturally authentic. I don't mean authentic like gritty, or documentary (of course, Hollywood his its own kind of realism), but in the styles and attitudes of the time. The hairstyles reminded me of my grandparents. Like the fifties, this film watered down a stereotypical community into archetypes, and then filled them with all the anxieties of an age. That's A LOT of anxiety, and they all express quite well (well, quite a lot, anyway). But we can see the general concerns about education, an awareness of looksism just in its infancy, and every single female desperate for some kind of truce in the gender wars (which women lost badly in that decade). I'm not sure if the ending was happy or sad, bu...

 Maggie McNamara plays a very amusing character here, who surprisingly holds her own against the dynamic duo of David Niven and William Holden. It's not much of a love triangle, as Holden clearly has all the advantages (Niven is cast as a father, which mitigates his oodles of sex appeal), but that kind of tension doesn't really have the pull it must in current rom coms. The draw, the suspense, in this film isn't really about who loves whom, but rather, what they'll do to make it work. The film is more about conflicting personal philosophies than romantic tension. When the film first came out, it was quite shocking, but not for any real content. The reason this film so much appalled was the frank and casual way the characters (well, Ms. McNamara's character)  talked  about sex. Spoiler: as far as I can tell, they get married first. It's all quite innocent, ultimately.

 Apparently William Holden spend most of this production drunk, which works out just fine, because so was his character. The appeal of this film is its only marginally controlled lambaste (is that a word? probably just the wrong part of speech) of Hollywood back in the era in which the film was made. I'm not sure how pertinent it would be for Hollywood today, but it's certainly amusing to those of us who study old films. It's not just amusing, it's very, very funny. The jokes come quickly, but they exhibit such a wry and pointed sense of humor, that you definitely giggle. Tony Curtis's role was probably my favorite, as the main love story, much like the medieval rom coms it mocked, made very little sense, ultimately. This film's a must for classic movie lovers.