I'm a man so I don't even pretend to understand how you women think but Kim Novak running off with William Holden at the end of this movie was just a bad choice. The guy is a loser who isn't going to stop drifting around ever and he's most likely going to end up dead in the gutter like his drunk of a father did. Even Nick Adams would have been a better choice. At least he had a job delivering newspapers.
shareI agree, but for the romantic slant in the movie, there had to be an ending like this. It would be fun to go back to this town 10 years later and see how everybody made out.
shareI also confess complete cluelessness regarding women's motivations, (As Homer Simpson asks, "What do women WANT???") but I'll have a shot:
Madge is a child of a broken marriage and probably the child of an alcoholic father -- as was Hal. Such adult children are attracted to excitement, and having low self-esteem, mistakenly believe that they can fix other broken souls. Add the sexual attraction between Hal and Madge, and it's a done deal. You're right: she'll probably repeat her mother's mistakes.
Rationality has nothing to do with Madge's choice.
The last few lines of the movie are especially poignant; Flo, Madge's mother, pleads with her to not go because Hal will leave her ("I know!"). Flo's watching her daughter (who's *so* close to breaking out of this family's destructive cycle) repeat her (Flo's) mistakes. Flo's heart must be breaking. Then dear Mrs. Potts tries to calm Flo: (I'll try to quote from memory) "Let her go, Flo; let her make her own mistakes."
And so the wheel turns.
We all wish the best for Madge, and hope that she and Hal live happily (and soberly) ever after, but the odds are against them. I'm reminded of the biblical observation, "The sins of the fathers are visited on their children".
I love this ending. It seems very real. And after all, there's always hope.
It wasn't Madge running off with Hal, it was William Inge.
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LOL... I'm a woman and I have to say that I agree with you. While THAT DANCE remains some of the hottest stuff on film, I've always had a thing for Cliff Robertson just on GPs. Even as the no-account Kahouna in "Gidget" he still had a stand up, "masculinity at its best" quality about him that I find irresistable. His character was a little goofy in "Picnic" but running off with someone with a temper and no plan doesn't really strike me as appealing.
shareI first watched picnic 15 years ago when I was young teen.
Back then I found it cool and romantic for the heroine to run off with the wounded charming bad boy.
I just watched it again tonight and now I view the end from a jaded standpoint.
I still love the movie dearly but now find the ending full of folly. (At least for me if I were in that situation)
LOL
I am a woman and I don't even pretend to know what other women think, however, it's interesting to me what my own reactions to this movie have been over the years. I first saw it when I was 10, and I was afraid of William Holden. I just didn't get it. When I was in my teens, I felt completely different. I wanted her to run off with Holden although I didn't think to wonder why I felt this way. I have seen this movie at least twice in each decade in my life.
Now in my early '40's with a certain measure of wisdom (I hope), I think I understand what was going on.
Because of her beauty, Madge's mother groomed her to be a trophy wife for the most eligible bachelor she could get. She wasn't encouraged to do well in school, to read, or even to think for herself. Her "job" was to be beautiful, to be a "good" girl and to make a proper and elegant wife.
She was never in love with or felt passion for Cliff Robertson's character. She was only seeing him because that was the only choice she had, as she saw it.
When she met Holden, she felt animal passion for the first time. She probably had never felt anything like that in her life. In the end, she knew that she really could make her own choices and she felt that she had to follow her own passion for the first time in her life.
She was a young girl, inexperienced and lacking in wisdom. Therefore the choice she made wasn't made from the standpoint of wisdom or a vision of possible outcomes. It was impetuous. She was tired of just being a decoration and feeling nothing. She wanted to feel!
That's an excellent description of Madge's predicament.
As someone else said in this thread, it would be fun to revisit this small town to see how things worked out. That must be a mark of a good play/movie: we care enough about the characters that we don't want to say goodbye to them.
If I look at this objectively, running off with a stranger with the issues Hal was dealing with and who didn't even have a source of income or a home was a very bad choice. Madge was tired of people only caring about her looks and she felt pressured to marry Alan whom she didn't love. (Alan seemed like he would be an abusive husband anyway.) Hal becomes her escape route, not that it's calculated. It's easier to run away than deal with what seems to be an overwhelming problem.
But onscreen in this movie the ending is romantic, and I'm left with the feeling that Hal and Madge will have a decent life together. Or Madge will return home years later a la 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.'
~"Chris,...am I weird?"
~"Yeah, but so what? Everybody's weird."
I was a tween the first time I saw this, and I remember my mother saying something to the effect that Madge was an idiot to run off with someone who had *no* redeeming qualities whatever.
Some 40 years and a lot of living later, I now can see the alcoholic/codependent elements of Madge's and what's his name's "relationship".
It reminds me of a joke AAs sometimes tell when they gently make fun of the things they did as active drinkers:
How can you tell that 2 alcoholics are on their second date? One's U-Haul is parked in the other's driveway.
"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"
Given how entitled and spiteful Alan turned out to be, Madge made the right decision given her options. Even if she'd married Alan, he was so jealous of Hal he'd never really "forgive" her--or not badger her about what "really" happened that night. And the town would have talked about her like a dog. No matter what she did, she would have been under a microscope the rest of her life, and no amount of money is worth that kind of grief.
shareIn real life, Madge would find out just how hot she was once she got out of her little town, get sick of everything Hal had to offer which was nothing. So they'd last a couple years or when she matured some more, realize she doesn't want to be w/a drunk besides the fact he looked almost 20 years her senior, but even if he was playing 29 she still wouldn't have stayed w/the dude. Yeah I know it's not real life @ the casting of William Holden was a huge mistake (he was just too old) but it's always nice to see movies end well.
shareAs a mother of two daughters, I was right horrified by the ending. I haven't seen a movie this creepy since Marilyn Monroe in 'Bus Stop.'
And it does lend credence to my private theory that girls who grow up without a (strong, decent) father figure end up with horrible men.
There's a tidal wave coming, so you'd better start learning to swim. - Jukebox the Ghost
What did Madge not having a father figure have to do with anything? The point of PICNIC was how few options all the women in this town had, no matter how "pretty" or "perfect" they were. And those options mostly revolved around becoming part of some man's life instead of having one of one's own. As for how "horrifying" the ending was, well, would it have been better if Madge had married Possessive Rich Boy for security-at-any-cost and spent her life trapped in small-town gossip-and-amber?
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