Roman Holiday Blu-ray - Audrey Hepburn

Firstly, a HUGE thanks to our Patreon supporters. Your generosity touches me deeply. These supporters have become the single biggest contributing factor to the survival of DVDBeaver. Your assistance has become essential. We are always trying to expand Patron benefits... you get access to the Silent Auctions and over 10,000 unpublished screen captures (in lossless PNG format, if that has appeal for you) listed HERE. Please consider helping with $3 or more each month so we can continue to do our best in giving you timely, thorough reviews, calendar updates and detailed comparisons. Thank you so much. We aren't going to exist without another 100 or so patrons.

Search DVDBeaver

S E A R C H D V D B e a v e r

U.S.A. 1953

"Though Wyler generally liked to stick to the script, the location shooting allowed a great deal of room for spontaneity in order to take advantage of any wonderful new discoveries he happened to come across. “Filming in Rome in those days was marvelous,” said Wyler. “There were practically no automobiles, only Vespas. For every scene I could have had six locations, and each one was better than the other.” When he wasn’t making use of the beautiful Roman outdoors, Wyler used the newly renovated Cinecitta studios to shoot interiors.

A good example of this spontaneity while shooting is the film’s famous scene that takes place at the Boca Della Verita (Mouth of Truth), an ancient stone monument at the entrance of an old church. The legend of it said that if a liar put his hand inside the mouth, he would lose the hand. A truthful person, however, would have nothing to fear. Wyler said that he had gone sightseeing one day with his daughters to the monument and played a joke on them, sticking his hand into the mouth and pulling it out with his hand hidden under his sleeve. The joke terrified and delighted them. “So I thought there must be a place for this in the picture,” said Wyler. “Especially since it’s a story of two people who lie to each other.”

Excerpt from TCM located HERE

For the first time ever on Blu-ray, remastered from a 4K ﬁlm transfer, ROMAN HOLIDAY features a legendary, Oscar-winning performance from Audrey Hepburn (in her first starring role). Nominated for a total of 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, it’s the story of a modern-day princess who, rebelling against the royal obligations, explores Rome on her own. She soon meets an American newspaperman (Gregory Peck) who pretends ignorance of her true identity, in the hopes of obtaining an exclusive story. Naturally, his plan falters as they inevitably fall in love. Featuring Eddie Albert as a carefree cameraman pal, a classic Dalton Trumbo screenplay, expert direction from William Wyler, and featuring Edith Head’s Oscar-winning costumes, it’s a timeless romantic comedy considered to be one of the greatest films from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Posters

Theatrical Release: August 20th, 1953 (Venice Film Festival)

Reviews More Reviews DVD Reviews

Comparison:

Paramount - Region 1 - NTSC vs. Paramount (2-disc Centennial Collection) - Region 1,4 - NTSC vs. Paramount - Region FREE - Blu-ray

Box Cover
			Coming to the UK on November 30th: Bonus Captures:
Distribution	Paramount Collection - Region 1 - NTSC	Paramount - Centennial Collection - Region 1, 4 - NTSC	Paramount - Region FREE - Blu-ray
Compliance Statement:	"Gary Tooze is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon."
Runtime	1:58:00	1:58:00	1:49:09.376
Video	1.33:1.00 Original Aspect Ratio Bit-rate: 5.98 bps NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s	1.33:1.00 Original Aspect Ratio Bit-rate: 6.68 bps NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s	1.37:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 47,879,020,430 bytes Feature: 36,543,203,328 bytes Video Bitrate: 35.87 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate:
Bitrate:
Bitrate Blu-ray:
Audio	English, French (Dolby Digital Mono 2.0 )	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), DUBs: French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)	Dolby TrueHD Audio English 639 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 639 kbps / 16-bit (AC3 Embedded: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 224 kbps) DUBs: Dolby Digital Audio German 224 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 224 kbps Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 224 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 224 kbps Dolby Digital Audio French 224 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 224 kbps Dolby Digital Audio Italian 224 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 224 kbps Dolby Digital Audio Japanese 224 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 224 kbps
Subtitles	English, None	English, None	English (SDH), English, Chinese, Danish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Thai, None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Paramount Home Video Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Featurettes: • 'Remembering Roman Holiday' (25:29) • 'Restoring Roman Holiday' (6:53) • 'Edith Head, The Paramount Years' (13:43) • Photo Galleries • Unrestored Teaser Trailer (1:50) • Unrestored Theatrical Trailer (2:12) • Unrestored Re-release Trailer (2:20) DVD Release Date: November 26, 2002 Keep Case Chapters: 18	Release Information: Studio: Paramount Home Video Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Featurettes: • Audrey Hepburn : The Paramount Years (29:51) • Remembering Audrey (12:10) • Rome With a Princess (8:54) • Dalton Trumbo - From 'A' List to Black-list (11:54) • 'Remembering Roman Holiday' (25:29) • 'Restoring Roman Holiday' (6:53) • 'Behind the Gates (costumes) (5:28) • Photo Galleries • Unrestored Teaser Trailer (1:50) • Unrestored Theatrical Trailer (2:12) • Unrestored Re-release Trailer (2:20) DVD Release Date: November 11th, 2008 Keep Case inside cardboard box Chapters: 18	Release Information: Studio: Paramount 1.37:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 47,879,020,430 bytes Feature: 36,543,203,328 bytes Video Bitrate: 35.87 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video Edition Details: • Leonard Maltin (6:59) • 'Behind the Gates (costumes) (5:31) • Rome With a Princess (8:57) • Audrey Hepburn : The Paramount Years (29:55) • Dalton Trumbo - From 'A' List to Black-list (11:55) • Paramount in the 50's (9:33) • Remembering Audrey (12:12) • Unrestored Teaser Trailer (1:50) • Unrestored Theatrical Trailer (2:12) • Unrestored Re-release Trailer (2:20) • Photo Galleries Blu-ray Release Date: September 15th, 2020 Custom Blu-ray Case (see below) Chapters 12

Comments:

NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Paramount Blu-ray (October 2020): Paramount have transferred William Wyler's Roman Holiday to Blu-ray. It is advertised as "remastered from a 4K ﬁlm transfer". The improvement over the older DVDs (from 2002 and 2008) is readily apparent although the image has always been at the mercy of less-effectual sources. Paramount states “The original negative was processed at a local film lab in Rome and was badly scratched and damaged. The film had to be pieced back together, but the splices were so weak due to damage that extensive amounts of tape had to be used to allow the negative to make it through a printing machine. Because of the fragile state of the negative, a Dupe Negative was made and then blown up a few thousandths of an inch to cover all the splice tape that held the original negative together.” You can see contrast benefits from the 1080P (even the 2008 SD shows some green infiltration) and the image remains quite heavy but superior detail shines through and the overall appearance is certainly an improvement. It is on a dual-layered disc with a max'ed out bitrate and looked very pleasing on my system.... best I have ever seen, easily, for a digital viewing.

NOTE: it is finally in the accurate 1.37:1 aspect ratio - so the image looks a shade wider (fatter faces.)

NOTE: We have added 58 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Paramount use a, lesser utilized, Dolby True HD dual-mono track (16-bit) in the original English language. It is another notable advancement in the film's audio and score by Georges Auric (The Mind Benders, The Lavender Hill Mob, Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, It Always Rains on Sunday, Dead of Night, The Innocents, Lola Montes, Rififi, Wages of Fear) playing gently in the background. As well as a host of foreign language DUBs, Paramount offer optional English (and multiple) subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Paramount Blu-ray has most of the same extras from the 2-disc Centennial Edition adding a 6-minute Leonard Maltin (Filmmaker Focus) piece and 'Paramount in the 50's' featurettes and removing the 'Remembering Roman Holiday' and 'Restoring Roman Holiday'. No commentary and nothing new that is remarkable or vitally relevant. The package itself is quite lavish (slipcover that folds out to the film's poster) with many color photos etc.

William Wyler's Roman Holiday is brilliant, heart-warming storytelling. He is the master of this. Hepburn gets more stunning as the film runs and this is one of the top tier of all romantic comedies ever made. The appearance is not crisp or pristine but it is quite an advancement over the 12-year old DVD. The ending remains one of the great teasers in film history. A strong package from Paramount - fans have been very patient waiting for this on Blu-ray. An easy recommendation!

Gary Tooze

Package - Paramount - Region FREE - Blu-ray

Paramount - Region 1 - NTSC

Paramount (Centennial Collection) - Region 1,4 - NTSC

Paramount - Region FREE - Blu-ray