“So happy, Mr. Bradley:” the perennial grace of Roman Holiday
Last week, Roman Holiday, the 1953 William Wyler-directed romantic comedy that starred Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, was played at select cinemas in honor of its seventieth anniversary.
For me, an avid fan of Hepburn’s during my teenage years, Roman Holiday always ranked somewhat lower on my list of the actor’s achievements: it didn’t have the lush black-and-white cinematography and the Cinderella-story fantasy of Sabrina (dir. Billy Wilder, ‘54) nor did it boast the wistful yet slightly edgy chic of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (dir. Blake Edwards, ‘61). Wyler’s visual direction struck me as staid, not nearly as expressive as Wilder’s, and the streets of Rome were captured with a documentarian simplicity that felt embarrassingly out of step alongside Edwards’ pointedly romanticized Manhattan.
So I came back to Roman Holiday out of a sense of duty as much as interest. And, well, maybe it’s one of those movies that ripens with one’s own age. For it is a lovely, charming movie of gentle humanity — perhaps the most touching and graceful love story I’ve ever seen put to film.
A lot of this has to with the deft emotional intelligence of its lead actors. (And, for that matter, with William Wyler’s underplayed yet deliberate direction.) For instance, there’s a scene where Princess Anne (Hepburn), who has run away from her royal duties while under the influence of tranquilizers, awakens after having spent the night at newspaperman and Good Samaritan Joe Bradley’s (Peck’s) apartment. While still slumbering, she mutters some questions to Joe, believing him to be her private doctor. He humors her, angling for juicy revelations that he might use in the exclusive profile he intends to write about her. (She’s not aware that her protector is a member of the press.)
When Anne cracks open her eyes, however, she suddenly realizes that she’s not in her embassy bedroom. The tranquilizers have worn off. Her expression drops from mellow pleasure to severe defensiveness.
“Where am I?” she asks Joe — terrified, yet still in command. Smiling, he fills her in on the details of her evening, clarifying that she spent the night in his bed.
As Anne, Hepburn casts her eyes downward for a moment, registering her new friend’s tone as well as his information. Peck’s Joe watches on, patient and knowing.
Slowly, almost invisibly, a smile tugs at the corners of Anne’s mouth. She looks back up at Joe, beaming, and emits a low, soft gurgle of a laugh — relieved, and supremely pleased with where and how she finds herself.
“How do you do?,” she coos, offering him a handshake.
It is a moment of delirious humility that locates the joy and ease of two adult people arriving at an initial understanding, and mutual respect for one another. It characterizes Roman Holiday as a whole, for this is a movie that crests and flows upon graceful evocations of personal surprise, discovery, and delight.
Hepburn and Peck alike demonstrate an uncanny modernity in their performance, at once presenting as towering figures of glorious beauty, and as deeply naturalistic individuals of unassuming modesty. Their work here is a keen reminder that the wave of naturalistic acting that had taken Hollywood by storm a couple years earlier (principally, via Marlon Brando’s steamy, surly work in A Streetcar Named Desire,‘51) was not as new as everyone thought it to be. Indeed, there are glimpses of acting between onscreen couples throughout the first twenty-five years of sound in American movies that feel authentic, while simultaneously never losing theatrical grandeur: there’s Barbara Stanwyck teasing Henry Fonda’s hair in The Lady Eve… Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten locked in a fierce standoff in Shadow of a Doubt… Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn plodding around a fountain with champagne glasses in The Philadelphia Story… even William Powell and Myrna Loy achieved moments of hushed sincerity in semi-serious films like Manhattan Melodrama or Libeled Lady.
I think it’s fair to say, though, that the authenticity of Roman Holiday is all the more distinct for how it presents a man and woman as true equals. At the end of the film, when Anne returns to her role as Princess, and Joe attends her farewell press conference, the simple, earnest pride with which Peck gazes up at Hepburn is not just massively affecting: it constitutes something of a feminist consciousness. A man regards a woman with total respect — not on the grounds of her title, or sexual objectification, but on the grounds of her character. He is in awe of her abundant personal beauty. He admires her being.
In this way, Peck is a perfect avatar for those of us in the audience. Roman Holiday was the world’s introduction to Audrey Hepburn, one of the indelible figures of twentieth century culture, and it is perhaps the most sterling representation of Gregory Peck’s own majesty, too. I will be returning to this film far more frequently moving forwards than I have until now. Roman Holiday is perennial. It knows what it is to be human.
