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.