Francois Truffaut’s Les deux Anglaises et le continent (1971)

Francois Truffaut’s Les deux Anglaises et le continent (1971)

Truffaut’s title Les deux Anglaises et le continent refers to two English girls, Muriel and Anne Brown, and their lover, Claude Roc, a Frenchman. It’s a confusing title until it is explained that the girls affectionately call Claude le continent. Even so, it’s a ditsy...
James Ivory’s A Room with a View (1985)

James Ivory’s A Room with a View (1985)

Ivory is faithful to Forster’s picnic at Fiesole, where a group of English tourists gathers to enjoy the view from Fiesole. * This prospect offers a glorious of Florence, but neither Ivory nor Forster describes it. As so many picnics do, the day begins well but...
Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden (1986)

Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden (1986)

Juan Gris’s Woman with a Basket is the dust jacket for the 1st edition of The Garden of Eden. Gris was among Hemingway’s favorite painters, and Patrick Hemingway thought this work expressed his father’s narrative’s “somber...
Larry Rivers’s Picnics (1985-1990)

Larry Rivers’s Picnics (1985-1990)

Rivers expressed his appreciation of good picnic fun in Picnic (1985) and The Pleasant Picnic (1990). Both are inspired by Leger’s series La Partie de Campagne [The Country Outing, or Picnic] (1952/53). The Pleasant Picnic changes the scene. Now the picnickers...
Rita Dove’s “Wingfoot Lake” (1986)

Rita Dove’s “Wingfoot Lake” (1986)

Dove’s collection of poems Thomas and Beulah is a history of her mother Beulah and her father Thomas’ life together from their courtship to his death. “Wingfoot Lake,” subtitled “Independence Day,” signifies the Fourth of July. More...
Paul Theroux’s O-Zone (1986)

Paul Theroux’s O-Zone (1986)

Theroux’s O-Zone New Year’s Eve ranks among the most disagreeable and uncomfortable picnics. Eight picnickers have gathered in the O-Zone or Outer Zone, once Arkansas and Missouri, now in 2036, a vast ecological disaster area. Encased in self-contained...
William B. Montgomery’s Industrial Picnic (1986)

William Montgomery’s Industrial Picnic (1986)

Industrial Picnic is William Montgomery’s satirical vision of how we are desensitized by pollution and learn to do with what we have. Wonderful satire. Featured Image: William B. Montgomery. Industrial Picnic. Hand-colored etching.
H.E. Bates’s A Month by the Lake (1987)

H.E. Bates’s A Month by the Lake (1987)

Though billed as a comedy of errors, for all that happens in Bates’s “A Month by the Lake,” the lake might as well be Lake Coma. There is, however, a Bates a lovely picnic in the summer of 1937, enhancing the slow-paced relationship of the...
Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (1987)

Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (1987)

The Princess Bride is Rob Reiner’s adaptation of William Goldman’s novel, for which Goldman wrote the screenplay. The story is known for its humor and gentle satire of romantic love and swashbuckling mischief. Vizzini’s picnic at which he duels with...
Eric Hill’s Spot’s First Picnic (1987)

Eric Hill’s Spot’s First Picnic (1987)

Hill’s Spot’s First Picnic begins when Spot helps Mom prepare the bread and jam and cheese sandwiches. There is a bone for Spot and a canteen with some beverage, perhaps milk. Friends each bring their share of food, and off they go. Besides Spot, the...
Blake Edwards’s Blind Date (1987)

Blake Edwards’s Blind Date (1987)

Edwards’s comedy is sometimes madcap, but when matters settle, there is a happy ending with a picnic on the beach. What else is new? See Blake Edwards’s Blind Date (1987). The screenplay is by Dale Launer. Featured Image: Bruce Willis as Walter Davis; Kim Bassinger as...
Faith Ringgold’s Church Picnic (1988)

Faith Ringgold’s Church Picnic (1988)

Ringgold’s Church Picnic Story Quilt (1988)  is a painted quilt that portrays the Freedom Baptist Church Sunday School picnic. Picnic cloths are spread out on the grass, and families sit in separate groups eating the foods they have totted along. The children playing...
Laurie Colwin’s Picnics (1988 & 1993)

Laurie Colwin’s Picnics (1988 & 1993)

Family Happiness is Laurie Colwin’s comic tale about an Eastside Manhattan Jewish housewife, finds who finds happiness at home and on a picnic in bed with her lover. On the way to her first affair, Polly Demarest stops for a smoked salmon sandwich. Alone and...
Randal Kleiser’s Big Top Pee-Wee (1988)

Randal Kleiser’s Big Top Pee-Wee (1988)

Among the silly escapades in Big Top Pee-wee is Pee-Wee’s klutzy relationship with his financé Winnie Johnson. Every day, Pee-wee and Winnie meet for a lunchtime picnic, for which she makes egg salad sandwiches that Pee-wee hates.   Pee-wee endures this because...
E.L. Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate (1989)

E.L. Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate (1989)

A picnic in the woods is a novelty for Billy Bathgate, a fifteen-year-old New York City boy who has never walked on anything but pavement. So, when Drew Preston, a worldly woman of twenty-one, says,” Let’s go for a picnic….” Billy is flummoxed. He...
Oscar Hijuelos’s Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989)

Oscar Hijuelos’s Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989)

Oscar Hijuelos’s Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989) is about Cuban immigrants in the 1950s. Music and food sometimes blend, and at a hotel club, there are platters of roast suckling pig, rice and beans, and a chocolate-éclair cake drenched in honey. But for a...