Why ‘Holiday’ has become movie royalty
By all rights, I should be writing this appreciation of the 1953 motion picture “Roman Holiday” at 3 in the morning, on deadline. Because that’s when I first saw William Wyler’s film classic — on late-night cable, while I was pulling on all-nighter for a test as a junior in high school.
I don’t remember how I did on that test, but I know I took a two-hour break to be transported back to Rome in the 1950s, mesmerized by a movie that would become one of my all-time favorites. Not only did Audrey Hepburn instantly become my favorite actress, never to be replaced, but Gregory Peck’s cynical newspaperman Joe Bradley became as much an inspiration for my own future newspaper career as Woodward and Bernstein.
William Wyler’s film, which has Hepburn, an Oscar winner in her starring debut as a princess on the lam, and Peck as the journalist determined to get the scoop, was an instant box-office smash and was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning three.
But it was more than a moneymaker. It became a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Just a few years before, Rome was in shambles after World War II, its depressing poverty symbolized by Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic “Bicycle Thieves.” Thanks to “Roman Holiday,” which captured a city in renewal and made it look like the most fun place ever, the Eternal City became the world’s most popular international
tourist destination throughout the 1950s.
It also almost single-handedly boosted the sales of Vespas, that little motor scooter that Hepburn and Peck ride during a madcap chase that is one of the signature sequences in the film. Well on its way to becoming the ride of choice in Europe, replacing bicycles, Vespa sold about a half-million scooters between 1947 and 1953. In the few years after “Roman Holiday,” those sales tripled, topping 2 million by 1960.
But enough about tourism and scooter sales. What makes “Roman Holiday” so beloved by generations of movie fans?
Obviously, there is the casting — Hepburn, of course, is perfect, but so is everyone, including Eddie Albert as a freelance photographer living the good life. And there is the escapist element. Hepburn’s Princess Ann feels so constricted by the demands and responsibilities of her job that she takes a mental health day — playing hooky incognito, able to move around freely. Haven’t we all been there?
And who can’t empathize with Peck’s perpetually broke Joe Bradley wanting more out of life, having been essentially exiled from New York for some unnamed transgression by the “American News Service.” Amusingly, he thinks of a post in Rome akin to being stationed in Siberia (if only my newspaper career could have included a stint as a correspondent in Rome and hanging out with Audrey Hepburn for a day).
I think the key to the film’s enduring quality is the way it creates an instant memory in the protagonists’ lives, a memory that not only encapsulates the ecstasy of living, but also the inevitable emotional pain of living.
There’s a famous scene in “Citizen Kane” when the reporter searching for the meaning of Kane’s dying word “Rosebud” interviews Kane’s business manager, Bernstein (Everett Sloane).
Theorizing that Kane’s secret might be a private memory never to be discovered, Bernstein says, “One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”
In a sense, “Roman Holiday” is an entire feature film about such a memory. It is a film about both potential and loss. About meeting the woman or man of your dreams and losing that person instantly, because of fate. A sense of roads not taken, and yet a very positive, lifechanging event.
(Attention readers: Spoilers follow.)
One would assume that, thanks to that day, Ann became a much better princess, and eventually queen. And with his newly rediscovered integrity and idealism — there all along, but buried under his relentless cynicism — Joe gets back to New York and becomes a great journalist.
Why can’t they be happy together? Like “Casablanca,” which has to end with Humphrey Bogart delivering Ingrid Bergman back to Paul Henreid, “Roman Holiday” must end with Ann reporting back for duty, without a commoner in tow. The ending of the film, the crowning moment of then-uncredited blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo’s practically perfect screenplay, has Ann reintroducing herself to the world, renewed.
Just as they met as strangers, Ann and Joe, reassuming their old identities, part as strangers. The last shot — an unusual ending for a romantic comedy — has Joe in an empty palace, a press conference having ended and reporters cleared. He pauses, looks at the empty throne. Then he turns and walks out into his future, the echoes of his footsteps and the marble floor deafening.
The question for both Ann and Joe: How do you find the courage to go on with the rest of your life, when you know the best day you’ll ever have in that life is already in the past?