Roman Holiday - a perfect closing scene

Roman Holiday: Never have the stakes been so low. And seldom has the romp been so much fun. This movie is effervescent. The sensibility of it fantastic. There is even a character arc for all the mains if that is what you want - Peck falls in love. Hepburn grows up and realizes she is a woman on a mission in control of her agenda. Albert even has his heart show up at the end - really all of them go through something in a very naturalistic way that I feel is unusual for film (certainly for 1950's US films).

I do think that Eddie Albert deserves special mention - he is severely handsome and hilarious. It may be mostly the beard, but he reminded me of Rob Cook. His character keeps getting dumped on his backside and getting his pants wet. He tries to 'help' and ends up in some slapstick shenanigans more than not. I don't know about the time around the release, but his performance is undermentioned in comparison to the other two these days.

The closing scene where she knows she knows, and Peck does his walk off is a superb slice of film making. You feel that both of them had everything the title suggests: A Roman Holiday. Nothing more - nothing less. I thought for half a beat that they were going to have them turn and run back to one another - I am no glad that didn't happen.

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Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) - it is a good deal better than the remakes

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