1、 Romance scene: Roman Holiday A fairy-tale romance exulting in the joy and anarchy of love By Geoffrey Macnab Friday, 19 September 2008 Innocent, joyful romances arent really what movies are about. There is little dramatic tension in stories about couples falling happily in love. It is the struggle
2、that counts. The recriminations, the misunderstandings, the jealousy and family feuding are what give romantic stories their traction: witness Romeo and Juliet. However, within films, there are often moments in which outside events cease to matter and the lovers are able to create their own magical,
3、 self-enclosed world. William Wyler wasnt in any way regarded as as a “romantic“ director. Look through his filmography and what leap out are films like The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), his brilliant but surprisingly bleak account of the experiences of three servicemen returning to civilian life
4、after the second world war, and Ben-Hur (1959), a sword and sandal epic best remembered for its chariot race. Roman Holiday (1953) was one of his few romances. The screenplay, by John Dighton and Dalton Trumbo, is barbed and multilayered. Gregory Peck is an American journalist in Rome a handsome but
5、 cynical figure. Audrey Hepburn is a pampered European princess who shrugs off her minders and goes AWOL in Rome. Some neat plot twists throw the couple together, neither knowing much about the other. Both have their own agendas. Peck is a reporter who needs a story about the missing princess. Hepbu
6、rn is slumming it, but knows she will eventually return to her life of privilege. Nonetheless, the scenes shared by the couple are blithely and giddily romantic. What makes Roman Holiday so fresh, apart from the obvious rapport between the elfin Hepburn and the darkly handsome Peck, is the way Wyler
7、 uses his locations. The Italian neo-realists had long advocated shooting on the streets and telling real peoples stories. Their movies, made in the aftermath of war, were invariably grim affairs about impoverished old men (Umberto D) or fathers who couldnt find and keep jobs. (Bicycle Thieves) Robe
8、rto Rossellinis Rome, Open City showed the Italian capital under the thrall of the Nazis. Wyler, by contrast, captures the magic and mystery of the city. It is the perfect backdrop for the romance between Peck and Hepburn. There is a spontaneity and exuberance about their scenes together that transc
9、ends their own little deceptions. (Hepburn doesnt realise that Peck has arranged for a photographer to follow them around the city.) Wylers two leads seemed so enraptured by one another that some speculated they must have been having an affair. “Actually, you have to be a little bit in love with you
10、r leading man and vice versa,“ Hepburn later said. “If youre going to portray love, you have to feel it. You cant do it any other way. But you dont carry it beyond the set.“ The films most famous sequence is when Hepburn rides off on Pecks Vespa. He ends up on the seat behind her as she careers arou
11、nd town. The scene is joyful and anarchic. She has minimal control over the vehicle. She and Peck are like mischievous kids. All their pretensions and affectations are forgotten as they cling to one another, riding the wrong way round roundabouts, scattering pedestrians, terrifying bus drivers and s
12、tartling the patrons of the local street cafe. A study in subtlety: Roman Holidays final scene The last scene of Roman Holiday is like a Beatles single, in that its so compact, and so perfect in its construction, that you instinctively feel it cannot be improved, irrespective of what you think its a
13、rtistic merits are. The director and all involved set the audience up beautifully with an hour and a half of charming, scenic fluff; diverting, sure, but not such stuff as dreams are made on. Then when everyone expects him to end the fairy tale the way all fairy tales ended in the 1950s, he calmly p
14、ulls the rug out from under their feet. Its a strangely unsettling ending no tears are shed, and there is no need. No matter how much one may deny it later, almost all who watch it for the first time are left with a feeling of gnawing emptiness, as if the happiness denied to the characters on screen
15、 was in reality their right, and was being denied to them. Clichd may a slightly tough word to use the first one and a half hours of this movie; it has winsome performances, beautiful Rome in the background and the sort of leisurely charm which Hollywood couldnt come up with the today if you gave th
16、em a multi-million dollar budget and a special effects system whichthinks for itself. But clichd it is Audrey Hepburn plays a slightly spoiled, very bored princess who runs away from her drudge of a royal life, and Gregory Peck a journalist who sees in her the story of a lifetime. Like any good Ital
17、ian romance, they walk around, see the the Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum (and, in a marvelous improvised scene, the Mouth of Truth), have close brushes with the local police, and finally, fall in love. However, the clock will soon strike twelve, and Cinderella must return to her gilded rags and t
18、roop inspections. So they part, if only to clear the way for the final, towering clich the journalist is sent off to the climatic press junket to win her back. So the great Gregory Peck stands and looks at his love for a sign, but things are not going according to script. We have seen a little while
19、 earlier that the princess is no longer controlled by her advisors, and she reacts sharply when one of them reminds her of her duty towards her station. It gives us a hint that she has already thought the matter through, and made her decision. The deliberate manner in which Audrey Hepburn says her l
20、ines here could be (and has been, by some critics) put down to nervousness, a debutante handling her first big scene. As for me, I think of Anna Karina in Goddards Bande a Part looking straight at the camera and saying “My heart goes out at the sight of you”. Then I think of Audrey Hepburn interrupt
21、ing her own manufactured response to slowly intone “Rome. By all means Rome” and I cant choose one classic movie moment over the other. Finally, after all the questions have been asked, the princess comes down to meet the members of the press, including Gregory Peck, who probably expects her to say
22、a lot, and is disappointed. By now, the look of confidence he started the scene with is visibly beginning to wane; like the audience, he is slowly, painfully coming to terms with the fact that this may not be a happy ending. Yet he looks up, and with a movement so subtle as to be non-existent asks h
23、er “Well, how about it?” She replies with the slightest shake of the head. In an unforgiving close-up, we see hope fade from his face, and he swallows. The audience though, has not learnt its lesson, and still expects a fairy tale end. They force him to linger until everyone else has left, hoping th
24、at she will reappear, recant. But she doesnt. It truly is the end, and all one can do is accompany the man on his lonely walk out. 第一篇： A Holiday worth celebrating every day of the year. The Princess awakens from her slumbers in this classic fall-from-innocence, coming-of-age tale with a royal twist
25、. Audrey Hepburn stakes her claim as the most perfect woman who ever lived. Gregory Peck at his best as the neer-do-well American reporter who guides her chastely from girlhood to womanhood. What can I add? One of the finest movies ever made. Now will you please stop reading this review and rent the
26、 movie, for heavens sake? .Now, according to the rules, this review has to go for at least 10 lines. And yet Ive said everything I have to say about Roman Holiday. It is perfect. Rent it. Or better yet, buy it. You wont regret it. There, now thats 11 lines, that ought to do it. 第二篇： With a very nice
27、 blend of fantasy and reality, and two very likable stars, “Roman Holiday“ is both entertaining and thoughtful. Sometimes it is very funny, and at other times it makes you feel a great sympathy and warmth towards the characters. Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck are ideal in the leading roles, and the
28、 story is very clever in getting a lot of mileage out of a simple idea without pushing things too far, which makes it quite effective. The idea of Princess Ann (Audrey) slipping away unnoticed and unrecognized for a day of fun and freedom from responsibility is of course fanciful, but it works for a
29、 lot of reasons, not the least of which is Pecks role as a pragmatic newsman. He is a good balance for Hepburns charm and energy, remaining calm and logical without ever becoming cold or distant. You feel as if you could spend a lot more than a couple of hours in their company. And how could you imp
30、rove on Eddie Alberts performance as Pecks photographer friend? The movie also adds in the atmosphere of Rome itself, with some creative scenes that make good use of the setting. There are many fine moments in a story that at times seems almost like a daydream, and then it brings the characters back to reality in a moving way. Its not an easy combination to pull off, but here it all fits together very well, to make the kind of classic worth remembering, and one which you can watch and enjoy more than once. 43
