Retro Reel by Sreepathy, Volume 2

About ‘Retro Reel’ and Sreepathy Retro Reel is a column about movies, but it isn’t about reviews of the latest box-office releases. To be sure, there will be aspects of review, but the column is intended more as a recommendation of good movies of different genres, with the sense of a retrospective. Hence, the ‘Retro’ in the name. In a day and age when movies are projected digitally, the word “reel” may seem retrograde and outdated. Yet no other word captures the imagery of a movie as “Reel”… Sreepathy is a a self-confessed, unabashed movie buff who loves a well-told onscreen story.He has always been fascinated with movies ,especially the way they translate oral or written words into visual ones. He has a list of about 450 must watch movies and , “Retro Reel” is an attempt to share with friends of a similar bent of mind, some of the best movie-watching experiences he has had.He lives in Naperville with his wife and two sons.

Roman Holiday

Imagine you are barely out of your teens and the anointed crown princess of your country. Every starry-eyed teenager wants to be you…But you, however, want to be just one of them – more like a Cinderella in reverse gear! What would you do? How would you shrug away the mantle of monarchy? Welcome to the world of Princess Ann…

Or, if the gender doesn’t fit, imagine you are a penniless, hard-boiled ink slinger working for a small-time newspaper, whose mercenary editor – your boss – is forever looking for the ‘one story’ that will turn the fortunes of his rag. Wouldn’t you give your arm, even if it’s the writing one, to get an exclusive scoop on the crown princess’ life? Welcome to the world of Joe Bradley, an American reporter in Rome covering Princess Ann’s royal tour of Italy…

Now, we have heard and read many Princess-falls-for-pauper stories, but “Roman Holiday” (1953) is like no other. For the simple reason that most of the PFFP stories are schmaltzy, mawkish tear-jerkers where the pauper yearns for the princess, the princess displays a mix of pity, condescension, the inevitable pure goodness of heart and all that, before he is ultimately shown his humble station where he belongs…Roman Holiday deftly avoids all that drivel by telling you a story where Her Highness meets His Humbleness on his trivial turf, and on his terms – sorry, no sappy sentimentality here. In fact, the story starts off being canny and cynical before turning into a cockle-warming celebration of romance and love at their ephemeral best…And that’s the biggest reason why Roman Holiday continues to be one of the most beloved movies of the romcom (Romantic Comedy) genre.

…One evening, the breezy adventurous girl trapped in Princess Ann’s body rebels against the restrictions and regimentation of the regal routine, and wants to break free. A sedative is promptly used to quell her rebellion, but as the night descends, she manages to slip away from the protocol and propriety of her palace to enjoy the anonymity and abandon of a commoner’s life, even if just for a night and a day…

…The sedative does its job eventually, and soon the princess is sleeping on a public stone-bench on the streets of Rome, only to be discovered by our regular-guy-reporter Joe Bradley, who, of course, does not recognize her. Before long, without getting into details, we find the princess in the reporter’s poor pajamas, spending the night with him in the cramped confines of his lowly one-room apartment – but not before you have heard some of the most sparkling movie dialogue ever written for this kind a situation…

Now, before any vivid mind begins to paint the above bedroom scene, the said mind needs to be assured that there is too much dignity at stake for any episode of hanky-panky to ensue. Firstly, remember it’s a 1953 movie. Secondly, neither the script nor the caliber of William Wyler, the director, will allow it to happen. And lastly, at some level, you cannot associate hanky-panky with such actors as Audrey Hepburn. And certainly not Gregory Peck (watch “To Kill a Mockingbird” and you’ll know what I mean). There are some actors (Gregory Peck, Sidney Poitier, Jimmy Stewart, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn), who manage to convey this sense of innate decency that it is bound to disappoint you if you see them making onscreen ‘compromises’…

Back to our story…The princess wakes up late in the morning, and by that time our man Joe has discovered the real identity of his nightly companion…The princess begins a series of tête-à-tête with him during the day and adds a lot of staple to his scoop-and-say business by revealing her innermost wishes to him. Simple, girlish wishes like wanting to cut her hair short, sit in a sidewalk café, go window-shopping, lick an ice-cream, ride a reckless scooter (a good old Vespa, that wonderful export from Italy!), and so on…Sensing the ‘scoop’ potential of an ice-cream-licking princess on the street, the reporter begins to dream about the big story that has (literally) landed in his lap – “Royalty’s Romp on the Roads of Rome”, his mind begins to fashion fancy headlines of the missing princess. He insists on taking her through the city’s streets to indulge her every wish so he can make it a part of the big story he intends writing. To add visuals to his story, he enlists the help of his photographer-partner (another needy newshound, brilliantly and mischievously played by Eddie Albert) to snap pictures of the princess’ rounds of Rome…

…What transpires with the three of them teamed together I won’t describe, except for the parts that you can guess – Joe falls for Princess Ann, and so does she for him; he drops the idea of exploiting her for the story; gets berated by his partner, and his editor, for being a fool; and lets her quietly slip back into the palatial mansion from whence she came…For what I haven’t described, you should watch the delightful interplay of romance and comedy unfold on the screen – created and sustained by the very able hands of William Wyler, who brings the same level of authenticity to Roman Holiday’s light romance as he did to ‘Ben-Hur’, the famous mythological magnum opus that he stewarded a few years later. Roman Holiday was shot on location in Rome, without any copy-and-paste of stock footage and sound-stage shots of the Italian city.

Of the ten Oscars for which it was nominated, Roman Holiday won three of them, including one for Best Writing for the then blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. Gregory Peck, one of my favorite actors, plays Joe the reporter, and does a great job at underplaying an excited correspondent while bringing a rare sense of dignity to an otherwise calculating character…Audrey Hepburn plays both the princess and the prancing girl with such ease that it is difficult to believe that this was the first lead-role of her acting life. To top that, she received the Best Actress Oscar for this movie. Even though Peck was a towering star by then, you can see that Hepburn not only holds her own, but clearly overshadows him in some of the scenes they are together…Audrey Hepburn’s beauty is elflike, svelte, and sublime – and yet, to combine the poise and hauteur of a princess with the blithe, waif-like innocence of an ordinary girl is a daunting call, but Hepburn’s onscreen demeanor does precisely that with rare aplomb…Specifically, watch her after she returns to being the princess in the palace after her suburban peregrinations earlier in the day – she has grown up more in the last set of twenty four hours than in any other – and you’ll notice that Hepburn’s transition from the simple fun-loving girl to the sure-footed, powerful woman is as subtle as it is certain…

Before I let you go, a word about the ending, which is one of the most touching, yet edifying, movie scenes ever. In the hands of some of today’s Hollywood scriptwriters and directors, it would most certainly have been botched by an improbable curtain closer – but not in the hands of Trumbo and Wyler. The ending makes your eyes misty and your heart wistful, but your head will tell you, correctly, that any other conclusion would have been an exercise in crass compromise…

…Love, sometimes, is not as much in its fulfillment as it is in its lingering incompleteness…