Frederick Henry Townsend’s Zeppelin Picnic (1915)

Frederick Henry Townsend’s Zeppelin Picnic (1915)

Even after zeppelin attacks on London in May and June, Brits are undeterred and cannot refrain from picnicking even under the threat of being gassed. Acid satire by F.H. Townsend. Featured Image: Even under threat of attack, Upper-class Brits cannot refrain from...
Edward Ardizzone’s Picnic Outside of Brussels, May 1940

Edward Ardizzone’s Picnic Outside of Brussels, May 1940

Three soldiers picnicking on the grass lookup watching antiaircraft fire. Their easy postures belie their anxiety. This jarring juxtaposition of peace and war in 1940 is Edward Ardizzone’s record of the Nazi air force lightning attacks on the English and French...
Winston Churchill Picnics on the Battlefront (1945)

Winston Churchill Picnics on the Battlefront (1945)

With the Nazi army retreating, Churchill picnicked in Holland on the west bank of the Rhine River with Gen. Bernard Montgomery and Field Marshall Alan Brooke in February 1945. Allied armies had already crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany, and though the area was...
Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955)

Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955)

Ernest Hemingway thought Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was trash. However, Americans still readjusting to World War Two and its aftermath thought made it a best-seller. Within a year of publication, Nunnally Johnson directed a faithful film...
Günter Grass’sThe Tin Drum (1961)

Günter Grass’sThe Tin Drum (1961)

Grass’s mordant picnic satire describes five dwarfs, all Nazis, all entertainers in Bebra’s “Theater at the Front,” gathering for a picnic feast on a beach in Normandy. The irony of pleasure is lost on them. Living in the present, Oskar and his friends are happy to...
Richard Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)

Richard Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)

Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War keeps the essential anti-war satire originally envisioned by Charles Chiltern and Joan Littlewood. New and effective, however, is the film’s final sequence, which begins as a picnic on the grass and ends with a...
J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Khrishnapur (1973)

J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Khrishnapur (1973)

Farrell’s picnic in The Siege of Khrishnapur siege is purposely mischaracterized as entertainment for local Indians watching Sepoys attack the official Residency of the East India Company’s residence. It’s a fictional addition to a historical siege lasting five months...
Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (1973)

Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (1973)

Lester’s The Three Musketeers  is a comic adaptation of Alexandre Duma’s novel. The halte de chasse on the royal hunt portrays the lavish preparation for an outdoor meal fit for a king.   Louis XIV spent many hours hunting, and there is a passing...
Günter Grass’sThe Tin Drum (1961)

Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum (1979)

Schlöndorff does his best to remain faithful to Grass’s mordant picnic satire. Grass was pleased: “In Schlöndorff, I found a true interlocutor, someone who provoked me with his questions, who delved into the heart of the subject, and who, during our dialogue, forced...