A Movie with Character Depth

Here we go back in the 50s, the golden age of Hollywood. Yes, we are talking about the movie Roman Holiday directed by William Wyler starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. This introductory movie for the huge stardom of Audrey Hepburn has taught us a lot about human nature. Not so complex but the maturity of its characters makes this movie one of the best of all time.

This movie has all the elements to make it a classic. Colorful background, exotic scenes, royal richness, good humor, innocence. Royal Princess Ann portrayed by Hepburn who is on a state visit to Rome gets exhausted by her busy scheduled and decides to run away from her country’s embassy, but ends up sleeping on a bench alone where Joe Bradley portrayed by Peck an American journalist who finds her and takes her to his apartment unaware of that she is the Royal Princess Ann. The next morning Joe finds out that the women sleeping in his apartment is Royal Princess and promises his editor a Royal Princess interview with photographs. To take the photographs while interviewing, he takes his friend Irwin with him. But Princess Ann rejects this and leaves his apartment. Ann decides to roam around the city of Rome not as Royal Princess Ann but simply Ann.

She gets an invitation for a deck party from the barber when she decides to cut her hair short. When she comes out of saloon, she meets Joe and after a deep discussion they both decide to spend a day doing things they wanted to do. They go to a café; they ride on a scooter where Ann insists Joe that she will drive him and ends up getting arrested. Joe and his friend Irwin somehow manage to free them. While they were roaming around the city Irwin takes a bunch of pictures of them. They also attend the deck party where government agents spy on them but somehow, they run away. At the end of this happening day Ann realizes that she must go back to the embassy to perform her duties. She never disclosed her identity to anyone even though Joe knew who she was. The goodbye scene between Royal Princess Ann and Joe is one of the iconic scenes.

Joe tells Irwin if he wants to publish the picture of Princess Ann, he can do so. The next day both Joe and Irwin attend the press conference where Royal Princess Ann addresses them. When she comes to Irwin, he gives her the photos he took as a gift. When Ann comes to Joe, she just simply says ‘so happy’.

And the movie ends.

So, what this movie taught us about the human nature. Let us take each character at once.

Royal Princess Ann: Innocent, wild, exhausted young women. Because she was exhausted, she ran away from the embassy. She was wild as she wanted to do things and break rules. And she was innocent because she never thought bad of anyone.

Joe Bradley: Charming, Soft spoken gentlemen. He took Ann to his apartment as he thought it will not be safe for her to stay alone. He never used Ann’s innocence. He spent a whole day with Ann risking his job. He did whatever made her happy even though he knew at the end he had to say goodbye.

Irwin: He had a choice to publish those pictures and make huge amount of money. But he never did so, instead he gifted those pictures to Ann as a memory.

If you watch this movie, each scene will teach you about the character depth of human nature.