Roman Holiday (1953)

When the young Princess (Audrey Hepburn in her Oscar winning performance) of a central European country feels stifled by her duties and constraints, she bolts off into the night. She meets a reporter (Gregory Peck) who lets her crash at his apartment but when he finds out who she is, he plots an exclusive story on her private life with the aid of his photographer (Eddie Albert). Directed by William Wyler, this is an irresistibly romantic contemporary fairy tale and awfully hard to dislike (and why would you?). This is the film that made Hepburn a Star with a capital S and she takes to the camera like a duck to water! She's well paired with Peck who displays a surprising talent for romantic comedy that he rarely indulged in and their chemistry is strong enough that I wish they had done more films together. While it might have been nice to have the film shot in Technicolor to take full advantage of the Rome locations, the B&W cinematography by Franz Planer and Henri Alekan positively sparkles! I must confess I find Eddie Albert's Oscar nomination perplexing, he's fine but nothing more. With Hartley Power and Margaret Rawlings.