Valentine’s Marathon: Roman Holiday (1953)

I love Audrey Hepburn.  She was an amazing and elegant woman and actress.  I’m still slowly catching up with all her movies. I’ve reviewed Breakfast at Tiffany’s HERE and then checked out How to Steal a Million HERE.  She’s just inspirational.  This is her debut performance and I’m excited to see how she was 🙂

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Eddie Albert

Young Princess Anne (Audrey Hepburn) is on a European tour to promote public relations.  On the last leg of her tour in Rome, she has a break down and gets fed up with the tight schedule.  After being medicated, she suddenly decides to leave quietly and explore the city but thats until she is hit by the effects of the new medication and ends up falling sleep on the side of the road.  This is where she meets Joe Bradley, a reporter for the American News Service who eventually houses her for the night.  Next day at work, the Princess had cancelled the press conference due to sudden illness and he realizes that the girl at her house was her and he goes back and pretends to not know her identity and takes her around town while asking his friend Irving (Eddie Albert) to help take pictures to get together a big story.  However as the day goes by, they start falling in love.

There’s a certain classy, elegant feeling to these older classic romantic comedies. Roman Holiday is no exception. Its possibly one of the finest. There’s something innocent yet beautiful about the whole movie.  I’m sure the majority of you have seen Roman Holiday and if you haven’t, well, let me tell you how I felt about watching it just now for the first time.  I started asking myself how I had waited so long to see this because its epic.  It really is.  Its entertaining, funny, heart-warming and so romantic.  Its a charming piece of work with a great story and has a wonderful cast.

Do I have to proclaim my love for Audrey Hepburn again? Roman Holiday is her American debut and she is just fantastic.  I bought the collector’s edition with that same cover as the one I used on the top.  It has this clip on the making of Roman Holiday and there’s this clip of her natural while they secretly kept the cameras rolling and she is just a sweetheart.  She just has the leading lady feeling.  Plus, her innocence and charm works well as the role of a princess but something about her carefree nature works well for her spontaneous escape to experience the world for a day.

I’ve never seen much of Gregory Peck although his name sounds so familiar.  I’ve probably seen stuff in his later years but he is quite the handsome man with a charming smile.  You can see right away that he is definitely more experienced and possibly more at ease but he has this silly expressions that just builds the chemistry between him and Audrey Hepburn.  That scene up there is one of my favorite ones along with the mouth of truth.  This was so exciting to watch 🙂

And then, of course we have the supporting role of Eddie Albert.  Also, unknown to me. Yeah, I know, a lot of catching up to do with these classics.  I’m working on it.  Eddie Albert is the comic in this and something of a sidekick to Gregory Peck’s character and he does a great job at that.

I’m in love with this movie and with Audrey Hepburn’s elegance and charm.  There was beautiful music and the Rome setting was great.  The outfits for Audrey is gorgeous.  Love it all! Even the ending was different but still very great.  Something about these older movies that have something that the modern ones really don’t have anymore or just fail to capture.

I totally recommend it! If you haven’t seen it, go see it!

I told you I’d get some good stuff in between the Nicholas Sparks marathon, lets hope it continues 😉

What did you think of Roman Holiday? Isn’t it the perfect romantic comedy?

How to Steal A Million (1966)

Yesterday was a crazy day! The last day of my deadline and in the morning, we woke up to fix up some crazy drama at home which lasted right till I came home to continue cleaning up the mess. Exhausted and tired, I just wanted to watch a feel good movie and flipping through Netflix, I found a movie with Audrey Hepburn! After I saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I know that anything with Audrey Hepburn is just a wonderful pick me up flick through and through! A perfect choice for how I was feeling 🙂

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Peter O’Toole, Eli Wallach, Hugh Griffith

Nicole (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of a wealthy man, Bonnet (Hugh Griffith) who excels and enjoys creating famous painting forgeries. When her father decides to let the museum display his forgery of the Cellini statuette, he doesn’t realize until its too late that he may lose everything when the inspector finds out the truth.  Determined to save her father, Nicole asks for the help of a burglar who she thought had tried to rob her house, Simon (Peter O’Toole) who is secretly a private investigator focused on getting art forgers arrested.  His new target was Nicole and her father coincidentally. At the same time, she is being pursued by an American and art collector, Davis Leland (Eli Wallach) when she realizes the increasing interest she has with Simon.

I can’t express in words the level of awesomeness How to Steal a Million contains.  Audrey Hepburn is just about the most amazing actress ever! She has this charm and dazzle. I’m a girl and I look at her and I want that elegance that she can emit from the way she talks, smiles, dresses…just everything! Plus on top of that, there was an amazing romantic chemistry between her character Nicole and Peter O’Toole’s Simon. It was irresistible to watch.  I found myself smiling and feeling great 🙂

Although the story is fairly simple, the characters/the actors bring it to life.  I’m new to the older films so other than Audrey Hepburn, I know no one else. Or so I thought, because the character Davis Leland’s voice sounded extremely familiar. I later found out, he plays Arthur in one of my favorite Christmas holiday flicks The Holiday.  That character reacted in a really entertaining way.  It was maybe the charisma he had or something. I can’t pinpoint what it was but even though he wasn’t on screen a whole lot, he was extremely effective in making me laugh a little. The most funniest had to be the character of Nicole’s father.  He was just so clueless about everything.

Overall, everyone had this slight humorous moments which makes this a great rom-com.  You obviously can’t avoid some level of sappiness but it was so heartwarming and fun!  Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole was totally awesome on screen and even though there was some little effects thats out of date (which is inevitable since it was made in 1966), it didn’t hinder the flick at all! I loved every minute of it 🙂 Classy and entertaining romantic comedies, I like that a lot! They definitely don’t make them like this anymore! Totally recommend it! 🙂