ROMAN HOLIDAY – This Saturday at the Hi-Pointe – Classic Film Series

“Joe, we can’t go running around town with a hot princess!”

ROMAN HOLIDAY and BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS are the quintessential Audrey Hepburn movies. If you think Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, and Kate Winslet are the essence of Hollywood beauty but have never seen Audrey Hepurn, you are missing out on one of the greatest of screen icons. You’ll have your chance to bask in the glory that is Ms Hepburn this weekend when ROMAN HOLIDAY plays at the best place to see it -St. Louis’ classic movie theater: The Hi-Pointe (1005 McCausland Ave., St. Louis, MO 63117) It’s part of their Classic Film Series and screens Saturday, June 8th at 10:30am. Admission is only FIVE BUCKS!

The premise of ROMAN HOLIDAY is a bit of a Hollywood contrivance, but the dialog and the acting save it from becoming corny. It is Cinderella in reverse. The essential plot concerns Audrey Hepburn as a royal princess from a “nameless” European country. (Even one supporting character reaffirms that the country will remain nameless.) She is bored with her overly protected life which is so highly structured and ceremonial that even when she inadvertently loses her shoe during a high-class engagement, retrieving it becomes an act of refined etiquette. She is in Rome, one stop on a European tour with her entourage of dignitaries, and residing at her country’s embassy. Anxious to leave, if only for a moment, the gilded cage of her life of royal life, she sneaks out of the embassy and enters the heart of Rome via a food truck. Later she ends up drunk and unconscious on a Roman sidewalk. And guess who should happen by but Gregory Peck as Joe Bradley, second-rate American reporter who would like nothing more than to get the scoop of the century and hop back to the New York press scene. But of course he doesn’t know who she is. Being a good Samaritan (and the fact that a drunk Audrey Hepburn is laying there), he rescues her from the streets and brings her into his studio apartment. There is no question that this movie is rather schmaltzy by 21st-century standards. The story is a fantasy-comedy, but the writing and the acting which never lapses into too much sentimentality save the film, which could have been much sillier and much more syrupy. The sobering ending makes the film much better than it could have been. And of course Audrey Hepburn who essentially made her major screen debut steals the show and would go on to win the Oscar the year.

The Hi-Pointe’s website is HERE

http://hi-pointetheatre.com/