Take a look at this pedigree from the 1954 Academy Awards:

WON - Best Actress in a Leading Role: Audrey Hepburn
WON - Best Costume Design, Black-and-White: Edith Head
WON - Best Writing, Motion Picture Story: Ian McLellan Hunter and Dalton Trumbo

NOMINATED - Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Eddie Albert
NOMINATED - Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White: Hal Pereira and Walter H. Tyler
NOMINATED - Best Cinematography, Black-and-White: Franz Planer and Henri Alekan
NOMINATED - Best Director: William Wyler
NOMINATED - Best Film Editing: Robert Swink
NOMINATED - Best Picture: William Wyler
NOMINATED - Best Writing, Screenplay: Ian McLellan Hunter and John Dighton

The film at hand, Roman Holiday, centers around a bored princess who wants to break away from the constraints of royalty and live a “normal” life in the outside world – if only for just one day. The film is the antithesis to the original Cinderella story - rather than seeing how the upper-crust lives, our heroine in this case wants to see how “Joe six-pack” lives and exist in his world and while a love story between a commoner and royalty was hardly a new topic – even in 1953 – the film managed to strike a chord with audiences; evidenced by the aforementioned Oscar nominations and wins.

Roman Holiday accomplishes what not many films can – crossing multiple genres and crossing each of them quite successfully. It is easily one of the most charming films to ever hit the big screen and manages to be romantic, dramatic, bittersweet, and funny all at the same time. It was one of the better films of the 1950’s; it is one of reputed director William Wyler’s best outings; and has the splendid distinction of introducing the world to Audrey Hepburn – one of the classiest and most beautiful women to ever walk the face of the earth, much less grace the big screen.

In an interesting story, which is actually related in one of the DVD extras, Gregory Peck recalls a conversation he had with the studio where he demanded that Hepburn, in her first “big” role, receive equal billing in the film’s credits. He swore that the young actress would win an Academy Award for the role and that it would be foolish for he and the studio to simply credit her as “introducing Audrey Hepburn”. Eerily enough, Peck was right on all accounts and seemed to perceive the elusive “it” that Hepburn had in droves, as in order for the role of the princess to be believable as both royalty and commoner, the actress needed to be equal parts urchin and princess – a role seemingly custom-made for Audrey Hepburn.

Hepburn plays Ann, a princess from lands unknown on a goodwill tour of Europe who has made a stop on Rome, Italy. As is the case with most royalty, the tour includes a lavish party thrown by her country’s ambassador that features a large gathering of dignitaries. Like all good princesses, she waits in an endless receiving line to meet and greet each and every one. After this, she retires to her bedroom to rest up for another long and tiring day of much of the same – photo ops, public appearances, as well as other suffocating and rigid royal duties. Because of all of this, Ann dreams of life “on the outside” and wants nothing more than some time alone. After an unusually agonizing day and the realization that she has nothing more to do than to look forward to more of the same for her foreseeable future, the princess freaks out and in order to calm her down, her assistant calls the royal doctor for a tranquilizing shot. However, before the drug takes full effect, Ann is able make a clever escape from her royal handlers and she soon finds herself alone on the streets of Rome with nowhere to go – and quite drowsy.

Hours later, the princess is found quite groggy on a park bench in by American newspaperman Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck). Bradley assumes she’s intoxicated (actually, it’s the aforementioned tranquilizers) and offers her a cab ride home. However, she mumbles some incoherent and slurred statements and mentions that she’s staying “in the Coliseum” and therefore, he decides it might be better to take her to his apartment and allow her to sleep everything off. Things then take a turn for the unbelievable as the next day, the local papers report that the princess has taken ill and has cancelled all of her appointments for the day. After seeing the article, Bradley realizes that royalty is sleeping on his couch and decides to keep the information to himself in order to leverage his newfound scoop. Bradley convinces his boss that he can get an exclusive interview with the missing princess. His boss agrees and Bradley comes up with a plan to gain the princess’ confidence.

Bradley follows Ann through town and after finally catching up with her, he tries to act surprised at another “chance meeting” in Rome. However, Ann doesn’t know that Joe knows who she really is and she tells him that she is simply a student that has run away from school – Joe simply tells her that he’s a salesman. As such, he offers to take her on a tour of the city and she excitedly accepts. However, as the two spend more and more time together, Bradley begins to genuinely fall for Ann and must deal with the inner turmoil this causes him. Should he continue to work on his scoop or let Ann know of his true feelings for her?

Over the course of the film, we see a transformation in Ann, as she realizes the timid and frightened person she was and the type of person that she must become in order to be an effective leader for her people. Joe on the other hand stood the most to lose and in a sense, he did. He doesn’t get the story he promised his demanding boss and he loses someone he was falling in love with to a sense of duty, honor, and leadership. However, if it all worked out in a tidy and happy ending, the movie just wouldn’t be the same. The ending, as with the movie itself, is in a word … perfect.

The movie is as timeless as Hepburn herself and remains as one of the staples of a classic Hollywood romance.

Paramount has gone through much effort in order to get Roman Holiday in the fine shape we see it in here. According to one of the disc’s extras, the folks at Paramount went through multiple iterations of restorative efforts in order to remove large amounts of dirt, grain, and scratches from the original negative in order to have this latest 1.33:1 presentation of the film in tip-top shape. The works definitely pays off and believe me when I say that Roman Holiday has never looked better.

As I said before, the film is presented in fullscreen and is in its original black and white form. While there’s not a lot to be said about the film’s “colorful” palette and hues, I can tell you that the black levels that the film portrays are very solid. Roman Holiday does an incredible job of disseminating varying levels of white, black, and all shades in between. The film is properly balanced and contrasted throughout and flaws, while still present (in the form of a few specks and flakes), are very mild considering the age of the master print.

All things considered, Paramount has put together a very impressive outing for Roman Holiday. The restoration to the print was well done and can be easily appreciated by the home viewer.

What in the world is there to be said about a Dolby Digital Mono mix? You’re definitely not going to see me writing about incredible pans, boomy bass, or engrossing ambience … and if you’re thinking I’m simply going to speak on how “adequate” and “sufficient” the mix for Roman Holiday was, you’d be 100% right.

The mix does nothing more or nothing less than get the main points of the film across well. Everything is dead center and never strays from the forward soundstage. The dialogue is easily understood at all times, with no harshness or edginess detected. The score for the film sounds average, as it lacks any sort if impressive dynamics and fidelity to support it. Quite simply, the film sounds run of the mill.

Paramount has also included a French track in Dolby Mono, as well as English and French subtitles.

Paramount has put together a surprisingly nice set of extras to supplement this classic film. Not known for having much in the way of ‘Special Edition’ DVDs, Paramount makes some nice, albeit small, strides with their DVD presentation of Roman Holiday. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Starting things off is Remembering Roman Holiday (25:29), a nice retrospective documentary about this wonderful film. The supplement covers all aspects of the film starting with a bit of biographical information on William Wyler and the screenwriter, Donald Trumbo. Interestingly enough, Frank Capra was originally supposed to direct Holiday, but turned the job down when he found out that it was written by Trumbo, a blacklisted writer during the era. The extra also covers certain areas such as casting (Elizabeth Taylor was originally slated, but wasn’t available and Cary Grant simply turned down the lead male role) and obviously, a lot of time is spent giving us some biographical and historical information on the leads. Also covered are other subjects which include wardrobe and costume design, shooting on location in Rome, and eventually, the many awards and accolades the film and its stars received.

The archival footage included in this piece is incredible and alone, is worth the price of admission. However, we get a great documentary to boot and ultimately, Remembering was a great way to revisit a classic film.

As I mentioned earlier, Paramount went through great pains in restoring the print for Roman Holiday and that’s covered in a nice little supplement entitled Restoring Roman Holiday (6:51). This extra, via interviews with some Paramount execs and department heads, shows us all of the work that went in to restoring this film for the DVD-viewing consumer and at the same time, lets us in on the sad state of the original print before it went through Paramount’s fine restorative efforts. A really cool extra to check out and one that demands huge kudos for Paramount for going to all the trouble of restoring the print.

Following, we find a nice feature on Edith Head, the costume designer for Roman Holiday and other classic films such as To Catch A Thief, Funny Face, White Christmas and A Place in the Sun. Entitled Edith Head - The Paramount Years (13:42), we become privy to archival clips, footage, and photos that chronicle the career of Head and via interviews with David Chierichetti (Biographer), Tzetzi Ganey (Costume Designer), Bob Mackie (Fashion Designer), and Rosemary Clooney (Actress), we learn quite a bit about the 60-year career of this incredible costume designer.

The DVD for Roman Holiday also includes some of the original Trailers for the film. We get a “Teaser Trailer” (My God! Hepburn is so hot!), a “Theatrical Trailer” that runs for around 2-minutes, and a “Re-Release Trailer” that ran for the film when it made another theatrical run during the peak of Hepburn’s career back in the 1960’s. All of the trailers are black and white and are presented in fullscreen with monaural sound.

Finishing off the disc are a collection of Photo Galleries that are broken in to multiple sections which include “Production” (36 images), “The Movie” (43 images), “Publicity” (13 images), and “The Premiere” (8 images). If you’re a fan of still images, you should really enjoy this section, as the images are documenting a classic. While this was definitely a nice addition to the disc, the few images we are given don’t seem to be quite wide-ranging and all-inclusive enough. Even so, it’s a nice effort.

While you’ll be able to get through these extras in under an hour, it doesn’t take away from the fact that there’s a lot said in a little amount of time. The supplements are a welcome addition to a disc that was expected to have none.

Paramount, not known for putting out any sort of memorable ’Special Edition’, has done a really nice job with the DVD for Roman Holiday. The DVD is priced right, contains some memorable extras, has received a marvelous new transfer, and contains a classic film to boot. Highly recommended.