The picnic episode is the eye of a romantic hurricane in which Marylee Hadley attempts to seduce Mitch Wayne. Marylee choses the picnic ground because it’s where she and Mitch played and picnicked when they were teenagers. She remembers that once, she asked Mitch if he loved her. He didn’t then, and he doesn’t now. A constant reminder of her unrequited love is the heart she carved on a tree (still there) with the initials MH and MW.
Mitch is friendly, but that’s all. They banter, and as she spreads a picnic cloth, “I brought everything but rain and ants. . . Okay, correction, rain.” Settling down, Marylee pops the champagne and says, “Let’s eat, drink, and be merry. Mitch quips, “We’ll eat, drink, and run.”
There’s a wicker basket, but we never see the food.
See Douglas Sirk. Written on the Wind (1956). Screenplay by George Zuckerman based on Robert Wilder’s novel (1946). Sirk’s picnic is his creation. Robert Wilder’s Written on the Wind does not include the scene.