Roman Holiday (1953): Special Collector's Edition
1.33:1
Dolby Digital 2.0
Paramount, $24.95

How much can be said about perfection? The classic 1953 Paramount release Roman Holiday had it all: the perfect stars (Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck), the perfect director (William

Wyler) and the perfect script (by Dalton Trumbo). Now, thanks to some restorative magic by Lowry Digital, this DVD looks perfect as well.

Roman Holiday is a fairy tale in reverse, as a stifled princess (Hepburn) flees an endless gauntlet of scripted personal appearances and has one Grand Day Out as a regular girl. Peck plays the seemingly opportunistic newspaperman who pretends not to recognize her when he finds her dozing in the Forum. He helps her achieve her dream so he can get an exclusive, along with clandestine snapshots by his photographer buddy (Eddie Albert). All too soon, he realizes that he's in love with the princess and opts not to turn the material over to his paper, even though this decision will hurt his career. In turn, she chooses duty over love, knowing she will never see him again.

Shot entirely in Rome by French cinematographer Henri Alekan, whose credits include Topkapi and Mayerling, Roman Holiday was directed by Wyler, who was making his first comedy in two decades. Wyler had begun his career in the mid-1920s, making six-day Westerns for Universal. As an assistant director on the silent Ben-Hur, he could never have dreamed he would helm the 1959 remake, winning his third Oscar for direction. One of the most respected directors the industry ever produced, Wyler was often said to have no discernible style. But his films, with their lack of camera movement and unnecessary cutting, now seem a welcome relief from modern, frenetic, MTV-influenced work.

Roman Holiday marked Hepburn's Hollywood debut. She was discovered by Colette, the French author of Gigi, while making a small British film; Colette insisted that she be cast as the lead in the upcoming Broadway version. Hepburn won the Academy Award for Roman Holiday and became one of the most beloved actresses of all time.

In the "It's About Time" department, Paramount is finally giving screenwriting credit to Trumbo, who was blacklisted by the House Unamerican Activities Committee during the McCarthy era. Trumbo's credit was made possible when the picture's title background footage was discovered in the studio's stock library.

"Roman Holiday was an enormous challenge," relates DVD mastering director Ron Smith. "The film was posted in Rome and the nitrate negative's location is unknown. Originally, we only had elements that had been blown up to hide a scratch on the right side of the frame throughout the entire length of reel one. Unfortunately, this often cropped off the top of Gregory Peck's head. Then we found a correct dupe neg. I've never been so happy to find scratched footage!"

Using Wyler's print as a reference, Lowry performed several procedures. After the film was deflickered and steadied and the scratch had been removed, dirt and grain still remained. "There were hundreds of bits of photographed-in dirt per frame," John Lowry recalls, "and the amplitude of the grain was as much as 25 percent. This means that on anything white, like Peck's shirt, the grain had a gray value of 25 percent. A normal level is about 3 percent." Restored at film resolution, the work took six months to complete. "We removed the grain that had been added by the duping process, then made a new negative. The film now looks like it did when it was released 50 years ago."

An excellent selection of supplementary material includes a wonderful 25-minute featurette titled "Remembering Roman Holiday," a 14-minute tribute to costumer designer Edith Head, and a seven-minute supplement about the restoration.

- Greg Kimble