Roman Holiday

A plot as slender as Audrey Hepburn but oh what magic! If you've never seen this jewel, you're to have one of the best evenings of your week, your month.

Perhaps the key to this movie's success is restraint - in the dialogue, in the music, in the cynicism of Peck and cronies at the movie's beginning. No one gushes - all is understated - but how one feels its power.

I hope everyone has experienced a day such as they - with someone they come to care for - as much as they. It's my wish for the world.

Audrey Hepburn simply dazzles in this gem of a movie. Princess Ann (Hepburn) escapes the confines of her rarefied royal existence for a day, to be rescued by a reporter, Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck).

Bradley senses a scoop and seeks to inveigle the Princess into a story. However, this is a fairy tale, of the Princess and the commoner. Love blossoms, the beautiful Princess experiencing everyday things we might take for granted with a delight we cannot know. Sitting at a roadside café, getting a haircut, enjoying an ice cream, dancing on a riverboat. She soaks in these experiences in the company of her handsome saviour, not realising his intentions.

It's beautifully done. Hepburn is radiant, refined, beautiful, enchanting - things she went on to display in many movies. However, she was at her most perfect here, as the beautiful Princess needing love and wanting happiness. Peck is an ideal foil. Tall, dark, and handsome, his only thought being the scoop placed before him, his ambition wilting in the face of his developing love for a Princess he can't hope to attain. Both are ably supported by Eddie Albert as Irving Radovich, Bradley's photographer colleague. Indeed, Albert is involved in many of the funniest scenes.

It's a fairy tale, beautifully told. William Wyler makes the most of his location, showing us Rome in all it's splendour. The perfect backdrop to the perfect fairy tale.

However, this film belongs to Audrey Hepburn. She shines and dazzles, brightening nearly two hours of every viewers life. How could you hope for more than that.

After Trumbo we decided to watch one of the films of which Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay for. Roman Holiday is a 1953 American romantic comedy directed and produced by William Wyler. It stars Gregory Peck as a reporter and Audrey Hepburn as a royal princess out to see Rome on her own. Hepburn won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance; the screenplay and costume design also won. It was written by John Dighton and Dalton Trumbo, though with Trumbo on the Hollywood blacklist, he did not receive a credit; instead, Ian McLellan Hunter fronted for him. Trumbo's credit was reinstated when the film was released on DVD in 2003. On December 19, 2011, full credit for Trumbo's work was restored.

The DVD sat on my shelf for the longest time and I am so glad I took it out to watch. The screenplay is subtle, filled with nuances that Hepburn and Peck teased them out beautifully. I can hardly detect an air of pretension and emotional manipulation. This is as romantic as it gets between a princess and an everyday man. The ending in the big hall really hits the spot. So much is left unsaid but yet what is said speaks volumes. It never betrays the tone of what the film sets out to be but yet my heart was beating with the full desire of wanting to see the relationship go a certain more familiar way. This is an amazing date movie with oodles of intelligence.

As a college aged guy with several younger sisters, I'd seen far too many chick flicks as they were being watched and couldn't get over how bad they were. Even ones they claimed to be good were extremely lackluster and I was beginning to wonder what, if any, good romantic movies existed. Then one afternoon I randomly happened to catch Roman Holiday on TV just as it was starting. For some reason I cant really remember, I sat through and watched it and now am quite glad that I did.

Aside from the romance element, it's essentially the polar opposite of what I despised. Great acting, excellent script, and most importantly, an effective and beautiful story. I won't spoil a thing about the plot here, but it works. While the movie can be called a romantic comedy, the humorous elements aren't the cheesy kind of thing you might expect from recent entries in the genre. I All I can say to you is: coming from a guy, this is the first and so far the only romantic movie I have thoroughly enjoyed watching.

Audrey Hepburn burst onto the movie scene with this film, her first role. She plays an English Princess traveling in Rome who is bored with her official duties and the tight schedule she's on. One night after getting a tranquilizer to calm her from the stress of it all, she sneaks away into the streets of Rome. She's found by a newspaperman played by Gregory Peck, who takes her to his place to sleep it off. When he finds out who she really is, he realizes he's on top of a gold mine of a story, and enlists his photographer friend (Eddie Albert) to get candid shots of the two while they sightsee.

Hepburn and Peck are such an attractive couple, and director William Wyler gets lots of beautiful shots of Rome, including the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Castel Sant'Angelo, and of course the classic scene they have at the Bocca della Verità. It all makes for a very romantic film. Hepburn played her part perfectly, expressing frustration and joy with such economy, as well as the restraint that comes from being a royal. Among several others, the scene with her getting her hair cut short is captivating, and it's no wonder that she won an Oscar for her performance. Peck's performance is also excellent, and Eddie Albert pulls off the part of a young rogue quite well despite being 47 at the time. I won't spoil the ending, except to say it's touching and poignant, and so perfectly shot in the Palazzo Colonna. At the end of the day this is 'just a romantic comedy', with its share of silliness, but it's so mature and magical, and with these stars in this setting, it stands head and shoulders above so many others.