NFR Project: 'Roman Holiday' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “Roman Holiday”

Dir: William Wyler

Scr: Dalton Trumbo, Ian McLellan Hunter, John Dighton

Pho: Henri Alekan, Franz Planer

Ed: Robert Swink

Premiere: Aug. 20, 1953

118 min.

It’s a wonderful little romance, and the American screen debut of Audrey Hepburn – which won her an Oscar for Best Actress – and an Oscar for its blacklisted author.

This charming idea was the brain-product of Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976), a prominent and excellent American writer and screenwriter who was blacklisted for his leftist views during the Second Red Scare of 1947-1957. He was one of the infamous Hollywood Ten who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. To survive, he was forced to submit his work under a pseudonym – and won an Oscar for this screenplay, which he was unable to accept as he was officially a “non-person” due to the right’s witch hunts. The screenwriter was named as the imaginary “Robert Rich.”

It makes central its location. The city of Rome is canvassed, is used to maximum effect, due to a cute plot about a reluctant princess and an earnest reporter. Gregory Peck is Joe Bradley, a journalist in the Holy City who’s anticipating an interview with Crown Princess Ann. Ann – the radiant Audrey Hepburn, 24 -- resents her endless list of meetings, openings, interviews, and profiles that fills her relentless days of duty. She rebels. Her handlers drug her.

Alone, she changes and goes out, escapes.  Increasingly stupefied, she falls asleep on top of a wall. Joe finds her and takes her in, letting her sleep on his couch. The word goes out that the princess is missing. He goes to work and sees that the sleeping girl at his place is the princess. He gets his editor to pledge him $5,000 for his exclusive story about her – and bets him $500 to boot. She promptly gets her long hair lopped off and shaped into a pixie cut: a style which would be imitated by a generation of women that included my mother.

He returns to Ann, who calls herself Anya and pretends to be playing hooky from school. Joe contrives a meeting with her, and then the two run around Rome all day. Joe claims to be a fertilizer salesman. (Joe gets his buddy, a young, bearded Eddie Albert, to secretly take photos of their antics.) Meanwhile, the officials of Ann’s (unnamed) country send out a small army of agents to track her down. Joe and Ann, of course, fall for each other in the course of a day. They end up fighting the agents at a dance party on the Tiber, get soaked and kiss - and get arrested.

Joe springs them by using his press pass, claiming they were on their way to be married. They dry off, she makes him drive her to the palace, they kiss again, and she runs around the corner and out of sight.

Princess Ann returns to her place in the hierarchy, but famously says, "Were I not completely aware of my duty to my family and my country, I would not have come back tonight . . . or indeed ever again." Joe tells his editor he doesn’t have a story, forfeiting the $5,000 and the $500 to boot. He goes to her press conference the next day. She recognizes him and his pal, who slips her the photos he took. She says goodbye to Joe indirectly, and avers that Rome was her favorite city on her tour.

She glides away offstage. The numerous reporters file out. Joe is last, as he ruminatively meanders toward the camera.

Peck is fine as Joe: really too nice an actor to play an crass, opportunistic journalist. But the revelation is Hepburn. She is charming, transparent, and sensitive. She transmits states of mind with seeming effortlessness. Waif-thin, big-eyed, she created a new ideal of beauty, androgynous and soulful. She is endlessly fascinating to watch. The closer you get, the better she looks. She does a lot here with a thin character. She communicates the joy of simply being alive.

Her adventures can never lead to her and Joe getting together. They create closure for each other, and move on, as grownups do.

If Roman Holiday has any political message, it is merely that it elevates the personal above the political. Do our roles in life dictate who we are? Wouldn’t we do as Ann, a slumming princess who becomes a reverse Cinderella, did? Isn’t the minutiae of life what creates its meaning? The bountiful joy of Hepburn, unleashed from an oppressive fate, if only for a day, is stunning. Director Wyler, always good with actors, strikes gold with Hepburn. He just steps back and shoots her. She’s a natural film actress.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Shane.

 

 

NFR Project: 'The Naked Spur' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “The Naked Spur”

Dir: Anthony Mann

Scr: Sam Rolfe, Harold Jack Bloom

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: George White

Premiere: Feb. 1, 1953

91 min.

It’s not only one of the great Westerns, it’s flat-out one of the best films made. It also marks the apogee of the collaboration between director Anthony Mann and actor Jimmy Stewart. It’s a tale about greed, vengeance, and the nature of evil.

We are in the (ironically) beautiful and picturesque Rocky Mountains, near Durango, in 1868. Stewart plays Kemp, a bounty hunter determined to capture and bring back badman Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) for the large reward placed on his head. He enlists the help of a prospector, Tate (Millard Mitchell), and an ex-serviceman, Anderson (Ralph Meeker). Kemp’s motivation is disguised at the beginning; we only learn that he is not a lawman and that he is after the reward when Vandergroat, captured, tells the others.

Vandergroat is a role made for actor Robert Ryan, who built a career out of playing movie villains and tough cops. Here he is evil itself, working constantly after being caught to divide his captors, sabotaging their efforts and casting doubt about the others’ ability to share the reward money. He is accompanied by Lina (Janet Leigh), a young girl whose father was friends with Vandergroat. She’s on his side, but finds herself attracted to Stewart’s character.

A group of Native Americans soon confront them on the trail. It turns out that Anderson was discharged from the Army for raping a chief’s daughter. The Indians want him dead. Kemp tells Anderson to ride on and keep the rest out of danger, but Anderson shoots the chief from ambush. A fight breaks out, and all the Indians are killed. Kemp gets a bullet in the leg. There is a rueful moment when Kemp surveys the peaceful forest littered with the bodies of the dead.

Kemp survives his wound, but becomes delirious. It turns out that he signed over his ranch to his sweetheart when he went off to fight in the Civil War; while he was gone, she sold the ranch and ran off with another man. Kemp is determined to buy his ranch back with the reward money. Only problem: if he has to share it with Tate and Anderson, he won’t have enough to cover the purchase. The men fight over Vandergroat. “He’s not a man; he’s a sack of money!” shouts Anderson, who’d just as soon kill him as let him live (the wanted poster says “Dead or Alive”).

Kemp, stiff and wounded, endures more setbacks as he struggles to take Vandergroat to the authorities. He overcomes a nasty fall and a rockfall in a cave. Enraged, he dares Vandergroat to draw on him, but Vandergroat refuses.

Now the group must cross a Spring-flooded, rushing river. Vandergroat convinces Tate that he has knowledge of a gold mine that he will trade to Tate in exchange for his freedom. It’s a trick, and Vandergroat shoots Tate down in cold blood. He leaves his body out in the open so that he can ambush Kemp and Anderson.

I will not reveal the film’s climax; it deserves to be experienced as the director intended. Suffice it to say that Mann makes a statement about the commodification of human life and the emptiness or revenge.

The film is achingly beautiful, shot in the clear Colorado air. Bronislaw Kaper's score is top-notch. The script, by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom, is magnificent. Every line relates to the underlying themes, and the tension between the characters is a constantly shifting nightmare. It is not altogether clear that Vandergroat will be brought to justice. Everyone has pecuniary motivations that muddy their moral statures. This is a post-modern Western that deals in adult themes.

Stewart plays his typical Mann Western character – a man obsessed and in torment, working against his better nature. This darker, rougher side to Stewart’s acting would be epitomized in Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Roman Holiday.

NFR Project: 'The Living Desert' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “The Living Desert”

Dir: James Algar

Scr: James Algar, Winston Hibler

Pho: Robert H. Crandall, N. Paul Kenworthy

Ed: Norman R. Palmer

Premiere: Nov. 9, 1953

69 min.

Oh my God! Disney makes another film that I hate.

OK. A graduate student made a film of two insects fighting. He showed the footage to Walt Disney. Disney came up with idea of making a feature-length documentary about the lives of desert animals. The result is this, a jokey tour through the American desert environment and a profile of its denizens.

As is usual, Disney anthropomorphizes everything, even mud. The filmmakers built glass cases and put various natural enemies together in these environments, and filmed the conflicts. Thus the film is something of a series of cage matches engineered to provide exciting if not accurate footage. A cute musical soundtrack garnishes the film, cueing the audience as to how to respond to the film. Condescending. All the animals are cute and quirky, even the snakes and the spiders. The film is almost redeemed at the end by showing us a montage of time-lapse blooming desert flowers.

This film would prove to be a template for the hundreds of Disney nature films to follow – cutesy-poo writing, jocular narration, and contrived footage. This slap-happy approach to nature film would poison the genre for decades.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Naked Spur.