08/26/09 - Roman Holiday

Roman Holiday (1953, 118 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046250/

Usually this space is reserved for why I chose this movie to watch or something of that sort. Here's all that's needed for that space this time: Audrey Hepburn.

The story of the movie is that of a Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) who gets fed up with her busy whirlwind tour of Europe and sneaks away from where she is residing. Through a set of strange circumstances, she winds up with an American newspaper reporter named Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) and his photographer friend Irving Radovich (Eddie Albert). The movie chronicles the day she spends with these two.

Audrey Hepburn was really the only reason I watched this. This was her big time debut and it even won her an Oscar. Not surprisingly, her acting here is great. She's only around 24 at the time of the release but her acting is well beyond her years. She's simply fantastic and made me adore the most beautiful woman to have ever lived even more. To go along side her we are treated to Gregory Peck. Peck could simply be described as Mr. Cool in my opinion. Though I've only seen him in To Kill a Mockingbird and now Roman Holiday, the suaveness and perfection that he gives off on screen is palpable. This is a perfect duo. Then we throw in the "comic" part of the movie in Albert. He stumbles and bumbles about and it's all done so wonderfully. I can't say enough about how great these three people work together in this movie. For this movie to work, though, this is exactly what's needed.

As for how the characters play out on screen, most everything seems to be going right here. The beginning is somewhat drawn-out in my opinion, though, but after the movie starts rolling, it gets really good really fast. The most memorable scene (besides the ending, which I'll write about below) is the Stone of Truth scene which is hilarious. Everyone seems to break character yet it was immediately forgiven as I started laughing. As the movie progresses, Bradley grows into a fully bodied character and it's hard not to feel for the difficult decision he has to make. Princess Ann handles everything so well and behaves in such a fashion that it's almost impossible not to fall in love with her - that is, if you weren't already in love with Audrey before you started the movie.

As a romantic comedy, the movie is a bit odd in my opinion. It's extremely long compared to modern standards (or at least it felt that way to me) and the ending is heart-stopping. If there were a modern remake of this movie, I would expect the Princess Ann character to come running back to the Bradley character so that it could have a happy ending. I even expected that, as I've become so used to the cliché-ness of modern cinema. As it was, though, the ending was chilling. Watching Peck's Joe Bradley stand there alone and then slowly turn around and walk away was perfectly framed, perfectly timed, perfectly acted, perfectly everything.

Overall, I gave this film an 9/10. I was greatly impressed with how everything was. Audrey was fantastic, Peck was fantastic, and Albert was great in his lesser role. The main complaint is the length and the pacing at the beginning which I felt didn't really add much to the whole adventure that the second half was. As a whole, though, the character relationship made this movie an immediate favorite of a genre I don't usually watch.