Luke
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CibbuanoRoman Holiday
October 10th 2007 02:36
Hepburn plays a princess from an unspecified country, who visits Rome on an official function. As part of her title, she has a responsibility to be seen in public gracefully, and answer questions from the media with tact.
Peck is a dastardly journalist that's looking for a scoop that'll get him out of the deep rut he's dug himself in. Things go his way when he learns that the Princess has escaped from her hotel and is in Rome, pretending to be an everyday stranger.
Sure, it's whimsical and flighty, but the story captures something that audiences love to see... tow people from different backgrounds, meeting coincidentally and falling in love. While it was crafted as a light, entertaining comedy, the movie has had a deep cultural impact and was selected for archiving in the National Film Registry for being 'culturally significant'.
Romantic comedies can be irritatingly predictable, with a formulaic plot and a horrendously inevitable ending. After all, audiences want to see romance, despite the indifferent cruelty of reality. Roman Holiday, in contrast, has a heartwrenching, painful ending. As a friend of mine once said
"Everytime I see it, I hope that the end will turn out differently!"
Hepburn captured the eyes of American viewers with her performance: cute, elegant, playful. She's an absolute delight to watch and she carries the entire movie with poise and grace, a perfect foil to Peck, the rough-edged gentleman that goes soft around the princess.
It's a lovely movie and one that'll hit harder when seen in a cinema, on some suitably grey and dismal Sunday afternoon.
* this image is from this favourite movies page.
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
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Fat Cult
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Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
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- Luke
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
DAMN THEIR EYES!!!
Good post and....see you on 42nd street old top, while singing in the rain and barefoot in the park but GiGi will be there for you, showing you and an American in Paris the sights, then visiting Aunty Mame, while reading Philedelphia story, and then going when Mr Smith goes to Washington....to find out, at the end of the day, it's all about Eve!
cheers
fog
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
foggy - I watched a lot of these movies when I was a kid, but didn't appreciate them, as they were overshadowed by cartoon and space ships. Now, though, it's like rediscovery.
the best way to see these films is to go to a theatre that plays classics. Not easy. AS a result, I watch most of these on DVD from the local library!
Comment by Alexandra
Roman Holiday, along with such other classics as 'To Catch A Thief', and 'La Dolce Vita' may be categorised as part of the genre (very much in its gestation at that point) of the Postcard Movie, promoting and celebrating the rise of tourism as an industry and more broadly popular preoccupation during the period. The films moved action for almost the first time out of the studio lot and onto the streets of cities, celebrating and presenting landscape and physical setting in an entirely new way to cinema audiences. For the first time in such films the landscape itself became an integral character in the action, helping to dictate the tone and atmosphere of the work. What would Roman Holiday have been without its wonderful shots of the city, and similarly how could the menace of 'To Catch A Thief' have been so effectively heightened if not in the contrast between the darkly sinister action and the dazzling visual idyll of the south of France?