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The Oscars are a funny thing. These days, being swept up in the yearly race makes each of the nominees obvious. Of course The Social Network would get nominated for Best Picture. Of course Toy Story 3 is getting a nod. Why wouldn’t they? But looking back at the history of the awards, you see a few head-scratchers. When you hear people tell you that the Academy doesn’t like to vote in genre films, throw out Star Wars, which got a nomination in 1977 and was touted as the potential winner. When they say the Academy doesn’t like genre entertainment, mention The Fugitive, which got nominated in 1993. And when they say the Academy doesn’t go for romantic comedies, you can bring up Roman Holiday, the 1953 high-concept picture that introduced the world to Audrey Hepburn.

Roman Holiday was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Hepburn won for her performance in the film. Looking back at the film over 55 years since its release, I was genuinely surprised for almost the entire movie. Roman Holiday, for about 90% of its running time, seems like a very enjoyable and fun movie, but nothing that, if made today, people would go crazy about. Maybe if this was the first film to introduce the world to Carey Mulligan, we’d have gone nuts about it. But I was shocked. What about Roman Holiday defined it as an Oscar contender, aside from starring Gregory Peck, a future winner for his role in To Kill A Mockingbird? What frustrated me while I watched Roman Holiday was that it was cute, kind of charming, well-directed, and so on, but it wasn’t something I’d remember in a week.

If you’ve seen the movie, you know where I’m going with this. If you haven’t seen the film, I won’t exactly spoil the ending of the film, but I will say that the final scene packs a surprisingly emotional punch, though you can probably chalk that up to Peck and Hepburn being so charismatic. Frankly, the end of the film is so good that it makes the rest extremely disappointing. The plot is paper-thin: a princess from a fictional country is tired of not having a life, so she escapes while visiting Rome and is squired around the place by an American journalist who’s in town to cover the story of the visiting royalty. Who guesses that they fall in love with each other? You all win! The pleasures of Roman Holiday aren’t in the twists and turns of the plot, but in watching two very charming people play off one another.

Of course, when Roman Holiday came out, the studio only knew that Peck would do fine in the role. Peck had been performing in popular films including Gentlemen’s Agreement, for a few years, but Hepburn was a newcomer. The film’s director, William Wyler, found that Hepburn possessed the right innocent yet sweet qualities of Princess Ann, specifically when she wasn’t aware that she was being filmed for her screen test. Of course, Hepburn would go on to be one of the most iconic movie stars, and you can see why in Roman Holiday. The story seems a bit rote, but there’s real fun to be had in watching an actress being introduced to the world of Hollywood in the same way that Princess Ann is introduced to the real world during her sojourn in Rome.

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