Weekend Cinema Spotlight: Roman Holiday/Sabrina DOUBLE FEATURE!

"Roman Holiday" (1953)

Roman Holiday is the first role Audrey Hepburn received in films and it's the role of Princess Ann that won her an Academy Award in 1954.

Hepburn plays a Princess who is overwhelmed by her royal duties and decides she needs to get away from it all. I know many of us would love to get away from our daily routines to be a Princess for a day! Oh a girl can dare to dream....

She comes across an American reporter by the name of Joe Bradley (more like he comes across her lol), played by Gregory Peck. Bradley eventually finds out who she really is and decides to spend the day showing her Rome all the while having their photos taken by Irving Radovich, played by Eddie Albert.

They spend a glorious day together and fall in love, although the Princess knows this could never continue. She then leaves Bradley to return to the embassy. For me the ending is so bittersweet-just thinking about it makes me want to take a deep sigh.

The next day Princess Ann attends a news conference and discreetly, in their own way, say profess their gratitude and care for one another. The last few moments of the film, you see Bradley lingering behind as everyone at the conference has left, wondering what could have been.

Have you wondered after you have finished watching a film, especially a really good one, whether or not the cast got along well? I can imagine that Hepburn and Peck got along nicely especially because they were both incredibly down-to-earth and nice people. Many reports say that Bogart despised Hepburn and thought she was a horrible actress. I suppose only Bogart could tell us if that was true or perhaps his widow, Lauren Bacall? I like to think he was a gentlemen around her and he was professional because the scenes they did together were just marvelous.

"Sabrina" (1954)

Sabrina was the second film of Audrey's and it starred the talented Humphrey Bogart and the dashing William Holden.

Hepburn played the role of Sabrina Fairchild who was the only child of a chauffeur named, Thomas played by John Williams. Sabrina is desperately in love with David, who is the youngest of two sons of the super wealthy Larrabee family. David is a playboy and doesn't even notice Sabrina. 

Her father sends her to culinary school in Paris (lucky girl!) hoping that she will forget him. I simply adored the interaction between Sabrina and her father, it reminded me so much of my relationship with mine.

Two years later Sabrina returns home, more refined and glamorous than how she left. David immediately sets his eyes on Sabrina but his older brother Linus (Bogart) his arranged a merger of companies as well as lives between David and Elizabeth (Martha Hyer).

While David recuperates from an injury, Linus takes Sabrina out on several outings. It is there that Sabrina gets to know Linus as a man and not just someone she saw as aloof and "not attached to a woman" as she puts it. Slowly she falls in love with him and encourages him to experience Paris just as she had. Linus has other plans, hoping he can send her away to Paris so that the meager can continue as planned.

But it is thanks to his younger and less responsible brother that Linus gets the encouragement to take a chance with love and races to join Sabrina on the ship heading for Paris.

This film is the first time that Hepburn and Givenchy worked together on a film, a collaboration and friendship blossomed that would literally last a lifetime.

Both films are fun, sweet, endearing, and just simply really good. I have to say, Audrey really embraced her role as an actress and first two films gave us all a taste of what was to come.

xox