There’s really nothing better than eating outdoors. Everything tastes better in the fresh air. And whiling away the lazy, hazy days (and nights) of summer over a makeshift feast with friends is one way to ensure golden memories. The only thing that makes a picnic even more attractive is to add a bit of Tinsel Town stardust.
Dig into our top 10 picnic spots from our favorite films.
“Picnic” (1955)
Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by William Inge, “Picnic” is a 1955 Cinemascope spectacular that netted two Academy Awards. Starring William Holden and Kim Novak, the action takes place over the Labor Day holiday in a small town in Kansas.
Hal Carter, a charismatic outsider (Holden) blows into town to look up an old friend. Over the course of the weekend, he crashes the town picnic, falls in love with Madge Owens (Novak), the town beauty who’s dating his friend, and barrels out again on a train to Tulsa, leaving a trail of shattered family relations and rearranged lives in his wake. The film was shot in five towns in Kansas (Halstead’s Riverside Park, Hutchinson, Nickerson, Salina and Sterling), its sprawling landscapes heightening the small-town drama. See some stills from the film.
“Up” (2009)
Okay, it’s an animated movie (the first animated and 3D film to open the 2009 Cannes Film Festival), but that doesn’t mean we’re immune to the picnic scene during the Carl and Ellie montage. At the top of the hill, picnic basket beside their rug, the cute couple cloud gaze and dream. Both Charles F. Muntz fanatics, Carl and Ellie vow to move their house to a cliff overlooking Paradise Falls (they have the picture in their living room), but real life gets in the way and by the time Carl books flights to South America, it’s too late for Ellie. But Carl (and a young Wilderness Explorer named Russell) makes the trip by turning his house into a balloon-powered airship.
There is no Paradise Falls, but Angel Falls in Venezuela is considered to be the inspiration for it. Pre-production, Director Pete Docter and other Pixar artists spent three days in Venezuela researching and becoming inspired by the towering, lost landscapes.
“The Sound of Music” (1965)
Picnic food, dresses made out of curtains and a music lesson… In a film of memorable numbers, the “Do Re Mi” scene stands out. The multiple-Academy-Award-winning movie features Maria (Julie Andrews) as nanny to seven motherless children. In this picnic scene, Maria is teaching the notes of the musical scale to the Von Trapp children. It’s the first time they’ve sung; their grief-stricken father banned frivolity when their mother died.
The picnic takes place in the surroundings of Hohenwerfen Castle and the montage includes the Mirabell Gardens in Salzburg where Maria and the children dance around the Pegasus Statue Fountain and use the steps as a musical scale. Find directions to the Do Re Mi Picnic Meadow.
“Emma” (1996)
“They had a very fine day for Box Hill…Nothing was wanting but to be happy when they got there.” So begins one of “Emma’s” most famous scenes. Communing with nature, feasting on fine food and enjoying pleasant chit chat, the Regency brigade while away the hours on the North Downs.
The picnic scene in “Emma” (Gwyneth Paltrow plays the eponymous heroine) during which Emma ridicules Miss Bates (Sophie Thompson) is pivotal. Only when Mr. Knightley criticizes her behavior does Emma realize that she seeks his approval and, eventually, that she’s in love with him. Cue church bells and a Jane-Austen happy ending.
Box Hill has picturesque views of the surrounding countryside. Orchids grow along the slopes and many varieties of butterfly dart about.
“Picnic at Hanging Rock” (1975)
A dark(ish) one from Australia. “Picnic at Hanging Rock” concerns the loss of several schoolgirls and their teacher on Valentine’s Day in 1900, and how their disappearance affects the school and the wider community.
It’s all a bit spooky. What happened to the girls at Hanging Rock? Did they fade in the glare of the sun? Did the rock somehow envelope them? Apart from a scrap of lace from one of the girl’s dresses, no trace of them is found. And is Mrs. Appleyard, the headmistress, involved?
If you want to visit (and return), Hanging Rock is a spectacular rock formation with lush greenery, nestled in the heart of the enchanting state of Victoria. Each February, there’s a Harvest Picnic at Hanging Rock.
“One Day” (2011)
“Were olives too fancy? Was it funny to take Irn Bru, ostentatious to buy Champagne?” These are the questions that absorb Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) as they prepare to take a picnic to Arthur’s Seat in “One Day,” the film based on the novel by David Nicholls.
Graduates of the University of Edinburgh, Emma and Dexter meet up on July 15, 1988 and “One Day” traces their lives on that day – St. Swithin’s Day – for the next two decades (spoiler alert: you’ll need tissues by the end).
Arthur’s Seat, the mini-mountain, stands in the center of Edinburgh. If romance isn’t on the menu, the views over the city and harbor will make up for it. Follow this “One Day” film itinerary around the city.
“Armageddon” (1998)
This sci-fi disaster drama was directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, a Hollywood power pairing if there was ever one. This is the plot: NASA sends a group of deep-core drillers to stop an, em, humongous asteroid that’s on a collision course with Earth. Earth!
Where does the picnic come in? The food seems to consist of nothing but animal crackers. Ben Affleck’s character, A. J. Frost, wonders exactly what makes a cracker a cracker before going all Discovery Channel on Grace Stamper (Liv Tyler). She alternately laughs and swoons at his (often hilarious) commentary. Watch it here.
Film locations are almost too numerous to list but include Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas; New York; Washington, D.C.; Badlands National Park in South Dakota (where the Independence and Freedom shuttles crash land); San Michele, France; the Blue Mosque and Ortakoy, Istanbul, Turkey; the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort, India and Shanghai, China.
“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (2008)
One of Woody Allen’s finest films, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is about two young, American women – Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) – spending a summer in Barcelona. When they meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), the summer takes a romantic turn; until his ex-wife (played by Penelope Cruz) arrives, that is.
The cast is Hollywood beautiful but the camera reserves most love for the Spanish countryside. Allen wanted Barcelona to be a character too. And show-stopping tourist sites such as the Sagrada Familia Cathedral, Güell Park, the Joan Miró Foundation and Barcelona Airport star. Outside Barcelona, in Aviles and Oviedo, Allen caught beautifully this free-wheeling summer of lazy picnics and romantic entanglements.
“Out of Africa” (1985)
In her book “Out of Africa” Baroness Karen Blixen wrote about drinking champagne in the forest and bringing her gramophone (Mozart on record) on safari. In the film, when she picnics with her lover Denys Finch Hatton, a local big-game hunter, on the grasslands of Kenya the fare is slightly less extravagant.
Garlanded with awards, “Out of Africa” won 28 honors, including seven Academy Awards. The romantic smash hit (starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford) was filmed in Kenya, mainly outside Nairobi, in Mombasa and the Rift Valley.
Some of the scenes were filmed in the Lake Nakuru National Park. So popular are these scenes with film fans that this location inside the national park is now known as “Out of Africa.”
“Enchanted April” (1992)
Adapted from the 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, “Enchanted April” tells the story of four very different women in 1920s England who leave its cold Spring shores (and a couple of unhappy domestic situations) for a retreat in a castle on the Italian coast.
A gem of a film, two of the women (Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins) discover some common ground and they invite elderly Mrs. Fisher and aloof Lady Caroline Dester to stay. Eventually, Portofino and picnics on its stunning coast work their magic and the women become rejuvenated by their stay – “picnic-untidiness and all.”
Trivia: The film was shot on location at Castello Brown in Portofino, the same castle where Elizabeth von Arnim stayed in the 1920s. The book, when published, was a best seller and sparked a tourist boom to Portofino.
(Featured image: estelle f)
