The first picnic episode in film history is Segundo de Chomón’s comedy of “horrific” errors in Une excursion incohérente, which is sometimes translated as The Panicky Picnic or The Travellers’s Nightmare. It’s a silent film sequence of two minutes in an eight-minute film, one of several hundred silent films Chomón produced in Paris and Italy.
Upending the usual picnic expectations, de Chomón chose to present the unexpected, except maybe the rain. The episode begins with an aristocratic couple in Scots clothing arriving at the country inn. Intent on enjoying the outdoors, they set up a picnic on the grass, which begins well, but quickly degenerates—bugs spill from a sliced sausage, mice hatch from white eggs, and worms wriggle in the cake. Disgusted, the picnickers pack up, but not before it rains. Also, Hobart Bosworth’s 1914 The Valley of the Moon, based on Jack London’s 1913; Charles Chaplin’s 1919 A Day’s Pleasure; Roy C. Smallwood’s 1921 Camille: A Modernized Version (1921) based on Alexander Dumas, fils’ 1848 novel and 1852 play; and King Vidor’s 1926 La Bohème based on Henri Murger’s 1845 Scenes of Bohemian Life, aka Scenes de la vie bohème], and Giacomo Puccini’s 1896 La Bohème.
Featured Image: King Vidor. La Bohème (1926)