Пикник: Фильмнің тарихы мен өндірісі

1955 film by Joshua Logan
Harry Cohn offered the job of directing to Joshua Logan, who had directed the stage version. Logan was grateful as he had just had a manic breakdown.

The then 37 year old William Holden was already cast when Logan came on board. Holden was "happy to finish his Columbia Pictures contract with such a prestigious project" despite the film paying him $30,000 instead of the $250,000 he would have otherwise earned. Millie, the independently minded girl who memorizes Shakespeare sonnets and rebels against her older sister, was an early role for Susan Strasberg, the daughter of prominent Method drama teacher Lee Strasberg. Kim Stanley played the youngster sister on stage, but Logan thought she was too old on film and cast Strasberg. Elizabeth Wilson had a bit part as one of the smirking schoolteachers. Verna Felton, a longtime radio and TV character actor who was well known to audiences in the 1950s, had a strong supporting role as neighbor Helen Potts. Bomber, the paperboy, was played by Nick Adams, an actor who dated Natalie Wood and was a friend of both James Dean and Elvis Presley. Mr. Benson was played by Raymond Bailey (without his toupee), later known on television as Beverly Hillbillies banker Milburn Drysdale. Reta Shaw, Elizabeth Wilson and Arthur O'Connell recreated their roles from the original Broadway production.

The extensive use of Kansas locations highlighted the naturalistic, small town drama. Picnic was shot mostly around Hutchinson, Kansas. Heavy thunderstorms with tornado warnings repeatedly interrupted shooting of the scene on location, and it was completed on a backlot in Burbank, where Holden (according to some sources) was "dead drunk" to calm his nerves.

The film's release was accompanied by a Time cover story. It earned theatrical rentals of $6,300,000 in the United States and Canada and $9 million worldwide.</blockquote>Film critic A. H. Weiler of The New York Times wrote:[I]t should be noted that William Inge's distinguished comedy drama is slightly travelworn here and there. The hearts and minds of the commonplace Kansas townsfolk that were so beautifully revealed on stage still leave a sharp, poignant and lasting impression on a moviegoer. But the new CinemaScope surroundings appear too vast an occasion for these basically intimate stories. Lebensraum apparently is not what these Plains people need. And, while the titular picnic of this sprawling dramatization is inventive, eye catching and eye filling, it is not particularly germane to the dramas at hand. In returning to film making after a long absence, Joshua Logan, who has lived with the play from the beginning, has made its characters come alive again through his directorial artistry. Although he is occasionally overwhelmed by the CinemaScope process, Mr. Inge's principals are not. They still make Picnic a memorable and moving drama. The film was restored in the mid 1990s

In 1957, marketing researcher James Vicary said he had included subliminal messages such as "eat popcorn" and "drink Coca Cola" in public screenings of Picnic for six weeks, claiming sales of Coca Cola and popcorn increased 18.1% and 57.8% respectively. However, after being unable to replicate the results, Vicary later admitted that he had falsified the data.

Picnic was remade for television twice. The first was in 1986, directed by Marshall W. Mason and starring Gregory Harrison, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Learned, Rue McClanahan and Dick Van Patten. The second remake was in 2000, starring Josh Brolin, Gretchen Mol, Bonnie Bedelia, Jay O. Sanders and Mary Steenburgen. The adaptation by Shelley Evans was directed by Ivan Passer.