No place like Rome

I love classic movies. Toss in Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, or Jimmy Stewart, Ingrid Bergman or Audrie Hepburn, and you've got me riveted to the tube for a couple of hours.

I know that's a nebulous term, and "classic" is in the eye of the beholder. I ranted on the regular appearance of Citizen Kane on classic lists in an earlier post, but that film goes to show you that one man's classic is another man's clunker.

One thing I love about the classics of fifty years ago was their anchorage in a clear understanding between right and wrong, good and evil. Many of those movies could not be made today because Hollywood cannot fathom the concepts. Roman Holiday exemplifies that notion.

The premise: Audrie Hepburn (there's that name) stars as the princess of a notional country paying a diplomatic visit to Rome, Italy. While there, her frustration with the confinement of royalty has her pitching kittens at the smothering nature of her life. An opportunity presents itself for her to get away and she takes it attempting to blend in with the beauty of Rome.

Enter Gregory Peck (there's that name). He's a down on his luck reporter stuck in Rome (I know, sounds like an oxymoron, but no script is perfect) whom Providence has just dealt the story of a lifetime. The princess, whom he recognizes, drops right in his lap. Eddie Albert of Green Acres fame plays a superb sidekick photographer (a precursor to Steve Zahn in Sahara) hungry to take advantage of the oblivious princess. They have hit the journalistic jackpot. A story worth thousands...until Mr. Peck falls in love with his prey.

Why won't you find this film coming out of Hollywood in 2009?

• Chivalry. When Mr. Peck finds the highly drugged and gorgeous then-unidentified woman, he does everything he can to get her "home." When that fails and he's left with no recourse but to bring her into his apartment, he leaves while she changes into his pajamas. Despite having pointed her to the sofa, he returns to find her in his bed. After a comic toss to get her onto the sofa, now adjacent to his bed, he lays his head at the foot of the bed and thereby at her feet, so as not to present the image of any impropriety during the night when she awoke. Does that sound like anything Owen Wilson or Vince Vaughn could pull off?


• Discretion. Hollywood today thinks that you have to go full-frontal with more action than the WWF to get the audience's heart pounding. Alas. The romance that blossomed between Peck and Hepburn burned up the screen. The kisses, passionate and brief, without making it look like they were slurping oysters on half-shell.


• Selflessness. The ultimate good in Hollywood today is the consummated relationship. Nuts to your family. Nuts to your antiquated mores. Nuts to your duties or your obligations. As long as you end up in the sack, Hollywood is happy. Not so Miss Hepburn. Not so Mr. Peck. I'll not spoil the ending if you haven't seen it, but "self" plays nowhere in one of the most intense and satisfying endings I've seen in film.

Perhaps movies like Roman Holiday are escapist, a burying of my head in the sand longing for an era of which I was never a part. Perhaps. But such films exalt whatever is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. What better movie to enjoy with the family than one that lauds such virtues?

So tell me, what should I watch next weekend?