Episode 197: Picnic

FromScreen Test of Time

Start listening View podcast show

Episode 197: Picnic

FromScreen Test of Time

ratings:

Length:

40 minutes

Released:

May 24, 2022

Format:

Podcast episode

Description

Kim Novak and William Holden star in Picnic, the CinemaScope adaptation of the William Inge play about (what else) a picnic in a small midwestern town. Which sounds super boring but is actually kind of weird and… good?

Released:

May 24, 2022

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

The Screen Test of Time is a podcast where Suzan Eraslan and David Daw set out to watch every movie ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, in order, from the first awards season to eventually the present day. Each week, they watch and review a different movie, and when they've watched everything nominated in a particular year, they tell you whether the Oscar went to the right one!

Skip carousel

Episode 3: The Racket: This week, David and Suzan round out the last of the nominees for the very first year with a break from WWI and the very first gangster flick to get a Best Picture nod, The Racket. by Screen Test of Time
41 min listen
Episode 8: Disraeli: What do you get when you mash up a drawing room comedy, a spy caper, and a proto-biopic? by Screen Test of Time
38 min listen
Episode 32: The Private Life of King Henry VIII: You know the clichéd portrayal of Henry VIII as an gluttonous, overgrown man child? Charles Laughton's portrayal of the English king with many wives in The Private Life of Henry VIII is where it all began. by Screen Test of Time
38 min listen
Episode 19: Five Star Final: Another nominee that focuses on the behind the scenes business of newspapers, this time as an indictment of tabloid journalism. by Screen Test of Time
33 min listen
Episode 25: Smilin' Through: Our hosts start off the 1932/1933 Academy Awards with Smilin' Through. Norma Shearer, short shrifted in The Divorcee as a glamorous doormat, finally gets her due in the role of spitfire Kathleen, and co-stars Frederic March and Leslie Howard match her stellar performance. by Screen Test of Time
51 min listen
Episode 11: The Divorcee: Norma Shearer wears a Parisian dress shop's worth of fabulous outfits and Conrad Nagel plays the least immoral character in this movie as a man with a blatant disregard for the sanctity of other people's marriages. by Screen Test of Time
39 min listen
Episode 2: Wings: Just how many WWI movies with wacky romantic comedy subplots can one Academy Award season handle? by Screen Test of Time
43 min listen
Episode 13: Cimarron: Cimarron is the story of a politically woke dude, who still manages to be a bad partner and deadbeat dad, single handedly founding the state of Oklahoma. by Screen Test of Time
43 min listen
Episode 4: In Old Arizona: The moral of this week's show is "Be careful what you wish for." Last week, Suzan was over silent films and excited to finally get to the talkies. In Old Arizona granted her wish, but at what cost? by Screen Test of Time
30 min listen
Episode 6: Alibi: There are movies that are bad because they're offensive, movies that are bad because they're poorly acted, and movies that are bad because they're generally unimportant nonsense stories that don't need to be told. And then there's the rare film that hits all three. by Screen Test of Time
30 min listen
Episode 16: Skippy, Trader Horn, ...and City Lights?: David and Suzan prove their courage by watching a possibly cursed video copy of Skippy, so if you haven’t heard from them next week, they’ve been claimed by a ghost girl from a well. by Screen Test of Time
32 min listen
Episode 23: One Hour With You: Ahhh... there's nothing like the unfettered glee of a true hate watch, and Suzan and David are downright giddy this week. by Screen Test of Time
35 min listen
Episode 14: The Front Page: Despite being extremely resourceful, your intrepid hosts did not manage to find a copy of East Lynne this week, as there’s apparently only one extent copy that sits in a vault at the UCLA film archives. by Screen Test of Time
27 min listen
Episode 15: (Not) East Lynne: What do your long suffering hosts do when they still can't find a copy, no matter how grey market, of the 1931 version of East Lynne? by Screen Test of Time
32 min listen
Episode 12: The Big House: The Big House is sort of a watch-one-get-one-free movie: come for the surprisingly progressive commentary on the criminal justice system and you'll get a strange romantic melodrama dropped in the middle for free. by Screen Test of Time
32 min listen
Episode 9: The Love Parade: Ernst Lubitsch’s The Love Parade is a classic fairytale— boy meets girl, girl is the queen of some place called Sylvania, boy slept with her ambassador’s wife, but instead of ending up exiled forever, they get married and live happily ever after… and that’s just the first third of the movie. by Screen Test of Time
30 min listen
Episode 21: Arrowsmith: No, this week's movie is not about the guys who wrote "Love in an Elevator." It is, however, the movie that definitively answers the question, “Can a movie have too much plot?” by Screen Test of Time
32 min listen
Episode 22: Shanghai Express: Shanghai Express has so much going for it: Marlene Dietrich smolders, the cinematography is gorgeous, the cast is funny, the costumes ravishing, the dialogue smart. So why aren't Suzan and David in raptures and awarding it their first 10? by Screen Test of Time
37 min listen
Episode 24: Grand Hotel: At last, we reach the end of the 1931/1932 Oscars with the winner Grand Hotel. Sort of the first Ocean's Eleven, it's chock full of stars: Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery of The Champ fame, Greta Garbo (who delivers her iconic line, "I want to be alone"), and not one but two Barrymores! by Screen Test of Time
52 min listen
Episode 26: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang: The second film nominated for the 1932/1933 awards, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang was a ripped from the headlines, based on a true story, adapted from a book smash, and the rare movie that actually made an impact on changing the oppressive system it profiled. by Screen Test of Time
36 min listen
Episode 7: The Hollywood Revue of 1929: The Hollywood Revue of 1929 was definitely a departure from the Oscar nominated movies so far: a musical revue that feels like it was plucked right off a Vaudeville stage. by Screen Test of Time
29 min listen
Episode 10: All Quiet on the Western Front: Ten movies in and we've finally found the origin of the Oscar bait flick! by Screen Test of Time
46 min listen
Episode 33: Lady for a Day: Lady for a Day is an almost entirely delightful rags-to-sort-of-riches fairytale with a brilliant ensemble cast of at the time relative unknowns. by Screen Test of Time
44 min listen
Episode 20: The Champ: This week, Jackie Cooper is back, baby, and this time in a movie David and Suzan can actually watch! by Screen Test of Time
43 min listen
Episode 31: Cavalcade: The winner for 1932/1933, Cavalcade is like a season and a half of television that they've just slammed into a hundred and fifty minutes... or the first three seasons of Downton Abbey, with basically the same plot. by Screen Test of Time
41 min listen
Episode 28: She Done Him Wrong: Clocking in at a mere 66 minutes, Mae West's She Done Him Wrong is the shortest movie ever nominated for Best Picture. Through some kind of manipulation of the space time continuum, however, it manages to have roughly five hours of musical numbers all stuffed in at the end. by Screen Test of Time
37 min listen
Episode 41: One Night of Love: Grace Moore stars as a helpless aspiring prima donna who runs away to Italy to study with a famously cruel and abusive vocal coach, while consistently rejecting a genuinely good rich guy who just wants her to live her own life in this deeply misogynistic trash fire. by Screen Test of Time
48 min listen
Episode 29: State Fair: In this week's episode, David posits the conspiracy theory that State Fair, remade half a dozen times in various media, is funded by the shadowy State Fair Lobby... but is his assertion as wild as it seems? by Screen Test of Time
43 min listen
Episode 46: Flirtation Walk: Whatever you do, do not play a drinking game in which you drink every time our hosts sigh dejectedly this episode. You will be hospitalized. by Screen Test of Time
37 min listen
Episode 36: The House of Rothschild: If you're looking for a master class in how well meaning racism is still racism, look no further than The House of Rothschild, a film that tries to indict anti-semitism while reinforcing anti-semitic stereotypes. by Screen Test of Time
31 min listen

More Episodes from Screen Test of Time

Skip carousel

Episode 211: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: It’s been awhile since we had a flick where the Hays Code made it completely pointless to even try, but rarely with such incredibly good looking people as Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor. by Screen Test of Time
42 min listen
Episode 210: The Defiant Ones: Sidney Poitier makes his Screen Test of Time debut in this message movie that's actually good. by Screen Test of Time
51 min listen
Episode 209: Gigi: Ernst Lubitsch may be dead at this point in film history, but his influence is alive and kicking in old Maurice Chevalier. by Screen Test of Time
69 min listen
Episode 208: Witness for the Prosecution: The final film of 1957, Witness for the Prosecution has it all: Murder! Intrigue! Humor! Marlene Dietrich! by Screen Test of Time
61 min listen
Episode 207: Peyton Place: The Hayes Code relaxed restrictions on certain issues related to sex the year before Peyton Place was released, and the filmmakers took that ball and ran with it. by Screen Test of Time
49 min listen
Episode 206: Sayonara: Sometimes, our hosts' predictions from the previous week turn out to be wrong. It's rare that it's in this way, though... by Screen Test of Time
47 min listen
Episode 205: The Bridge on the River Kwai: The winner of the 1957 nominees, The Bridge on the River Kwai is long, and ambitious, and cost a lot of money to which hasn’t necessarily been the mark of a movie that stands the Screen Test of Time. Will your hosts finally enjoy a big, bold, and expensive movie? by Screen Test of Time
49 min listen
Episode 204: 12 Angry Men: The curse of great poster, bad movie is well and truly over! (Well, at least so-bad-it’s-great poster…) by Screen Test of Time
40 min listen
Episode 203: Friendly Persuasion: Gary Cooper plays a father and husband in a Quaker family during the American Civil War. by Screen Test of Time
49 min listen
Episode 202: The Ten Commandments: The Ten Commandments is Cecil B. DeMille’s apotheosis, and we mean that both as a compliment and an insult. by Screen Test of Time
42 min listen
Episode 201: Around the World in 80 Days: The winner of 1956, Around the World in 80 Days, features cameos from just about everyone who was alive at the time in Hollywood… which is probably why this hour too long, frequently racist mess got enough votes to take home the statue. by Screen Test of Time
44 min listen
Episode 200: Giant: James Dean’s last movie, Giant is a sprawling Texas epic also starring Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, and it’s damn good. Not perfect. But damn good. by Screen Test of Time
64 min listen
Episode 199: The King and I: Well, this was painful. The King and I is a disaster of racist stereotypes, colonialist tropes, and yellow face casting, with, unfortunately, some really talented people involved in making it happen. Just agonizing. by Screen Test of Time
41 min listen
Episode 198: The Rose Tattoo: And we're back after a brief hiatus with the final nominee of 1955, the lesser known (for a reason) Tennessee Williams penned The Rose Tattoo starring Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster. by Screen Test of Time
42 min listen
Episode 196: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; Jennifer Jones in yellow-face is anything but. by Screen Test of Time
44 min listen
Episode 195: Mister Roberts: Mister Roberts was the last movie William Powell ever did, and he’s great in it. Unfortunately, he’s not in it very much. Henry Fonda, Jimmy Cagney, and Jack Lemmon all co-star in this US Navy dramedy that had three directors before all was said and done, and the way the tone ricochets all over the by Screen Test of Time
42 min listen
Episode 194: Marty: Marty was a one act play that was probably pretty good… So good, in fact, that Hollywood thought it was a great idea to make it into a movie, add a bunch of extraneous stuff, make it nearly twice as long, and ruin it. by Screen Test of Time
32 min listen
Episode 193: The Country Girl: Bing Crosby plays an abusive, manipulative alcoholic stage actor trying to make a comeback, and Grace Kelly his long suffering, salt of the earth wife, and yet it’s William Holden as the show’s director who is the least believable character in The Country Girl. by Screen Test of Time
35 min listen
Episode 192: On the Waterfront: In which Elia Kazan uses Marlon Brando to try to not only justify snitching on his friends and colleagues to the House Un-American Activities Committee, but convince his audience it was heroic. We’re not buying it. by Screen Test of Time
48 min listen
Episode 191: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: Look, David and Suzan normally don’t side with musical theatre haters, but in the case of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, they’ll make an exception. by Screen Test of Time
36 min listen
Episode 190: The Caine Mutiny: The Caine Mutiny can’t make up its mind if it is an excellent film about the stigma of mental illness, especially in the military, or an embarrassingly boring romantic class dramedy. When Humphrey Bogart and José Ferrer are around, it’s the former and at its best. by Screen Test of Time
37 min listen
Episode 189: Three Coins in the Fountain: A picture postcard movie of Rome and Venice, Three Coins in the Fountain answers a question our hosts didn’t even know they had: can a movie devoid of stakes be good? by Screen Test of Time
46 min listen
Episode 188: The Robe: Richard Burton stars in what is quite literally Bible fanfiction that is almost so bad it’s good. Almost. by Screen Test of Time
27 min listen
Episode 187: Roman Holiday: Possibly the greatest casting of all time in any movie, ever. No one but Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck could have pulled this off. But wow, did they ever. by Screen Test of Time
37 min listen
Episode 186: From Here to Eternity: It’s got the most famous kissing scene of all time. It’s got at least 3 different plot lines. It’s got Hawaii, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It’s got Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Donna Read, Burt Lancaster, even Frank Sinatra! by Screen Test of Time
28 min listen
Episode 185: Julius Caesar: Listen, we weren't so sure about Marlon Brando as Marc Anthony, either, but trust us, it works. Mostly. It mostly works. by Screen Test of Time
54 min listen
Episode 184: Shane: Despite its reputation as a classic, Shane leaves a lot to be desired as far as our hosts are concerned. Is it because the bad guys fought for the Union? by Screen Test of Time
34 min listen
Episode 183: Moulin Rouge: There is a reason that the 2001 Moulin Rouge exists, and it’s because this one from 1952 wasn’t good enough to make the subject closed. by Screen Test of Time
30 min listen
Episode 182: Ivanhoe: The 1938 Robin Hood did all of this better. by Screen Test of Time
26 min listen
Episode 181: High Noon: Suzan is in heaven this week, because Hollywood has finally figured out how to make a good Western, and even David enjoyed High Noon. by Screen Test of Time
49 min listen

Discover this podcast and so much more

Episode 197: Picnic

Episode 197: Picnic

Description

Titles in the series (100)

More Episodes from Screen Test of Time