Roman Holiday
Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 6/10
Meets Expectations: +0
Apparent Rating: 6/10
There are frequently lowered expectations when seeing a movie or reading a book which is a classic that has been used as an archetype for others of the sub-genre, simply because exposure makes what was novel seem trite. I have seen a re-make of Roman Holiday, Chasing Liberty, without knowing whence it came. I remember thinking when watching Chasing Liberty that some of the things they did seemed unexpected, without conscious rationale— today I realize they were consciously emulating Roman Holiday and everyone was expected to have the reference.
From a coherency perspective, Roman Holiday is superior because it stands alone. From a story perspective, assuming one has seen Roman Holiday, Chasing Liberty is better because of the ending and because modern emotional reactions are much more approachable to me than someone from my great grandmother’s time. There was this big to-do about a woman wearing pyjamas and I have no understanding of what the problem is. The princess offers just the top half as an option. I suppose it might be uncouth for a woman to wear trousers in public, but in bed? There were a number of things like that where “common culture” meant they didn’t need to explain and I don’t have any clue why that’s a big deal. The princess seems honestly horrified when she wakes up in a strange man’s rooms but because she’s wearing pyjama pants. Doesn’t it seem like she’d be more upset to not be wearing anything on her lower half?
The ending… No one says Roman Holiday has such a downer ending. Gregory Peck was amazing in it, because he manages to typify the expected stoicism from men but is nearly in tears when the woman leaves him. That’s what makes stoicism so powerful, when we really believe it but are let inside the curtain anyway. It gives leading men an emotional depth because of expectations. I think male actors of modern times have a lot more room for demonstrable emotion, but the stoic thing works for me especially in old movies.
Roman Holiday is in black and white. They go through a lot of effort to tell the viewer that the movie is shot entirely in Rome. They want to indicate that the scenery is for real. But then they filmed it in black and white! Since it’s after The Wizard of Oz, we know color film technology existed. Thus it is sheer laziness and cheapness that they did not bother. I give them zero points for showing “the real Rome” since they didn’t bother to do it right and in color, like actual reality. I somehow doubt that a visitor to Italy would have found Rome to be colorless in 1955 as if color had been invented in California and just hadn’t spread all the way to Europe yet. Thus they did not show Rome and might as well have filmed it in Hollywood. I don’t mind that they didn’t do it in 3-D or smell-o-vision (even if it’s invented soon) because that technology was not readily available when Roman Holiday was made. Movies had been made in color for more than 15 years when this came out.
On the whole, I considered this movie spoiled by the ending. The acting was good. The writing was good. The story made sense. The camera work was good (unlike the hamster-on-crack kind of camera work modern movies use to make things seem frenetic.) I really liked how the movie actually seemed romantic. I liked the comedic parts (which did not have a laugh-track and did not need them.) But a totally unhappy ending made this movie depressing. I’m not surprised it won awards since only downer movies win major awards.
Oh and this is one of those movies with costumes by the famous bitch Edith Head who won a slew of Oscars by stealing other people’s work. That meant whenever I saw someone wearing a new outfit, I wanted to hiss and spit. Knowing she won the award for this movie made me really angry for the people who did the work for no recognition. I think the Academy should have stripped her of her Oscars or at least given retroactive acknowledgement to the actual winners.
I don’t know who told Audrey Hepburn to cut her hair, but I thought the shorter style was much less attractive on her.
I think I enjoyed Roman Holiday, I am sure I would have liked it more if I wasn’t bringing all the baggage along. If I had seen this when it was new and no one had done something like this before, it would have been phenomenal.
