Roman Holiday: Not Your Stereotypical Happy Ending but Nevertheless Still One by Lindsay

Lindsay Parks

Professor Sinowitz

Romantic Comedy

21 April, 2020

Roman Holiday: Not Your Stereotypical Happy Ending but Nevertheless Still One

            The romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953) by William Wyler strays from most other films in the genre because it does not follow the conventional ending, so much so that when watching it I actually paused the movie to see how much time was left because I thought there was no possible way that it could end like that. Traditionally, the two protagonists, in this case Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) and Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck), would end up together living happily ever after; instead, Princess Ann and Joe Bradley go their separate ways in the end. While they do not end up together, they do both end up happy even though Princess Ann must leave Rome and return to her duties as Princess as Joe Bradley stays behind in Rome. While, personally, every part of me wanted to fight the fact that they were happy without the other in the end and did not end up together, Roman Holiday shows that not every couple gets their happy ending, sometimes they do not end up together, and that that is okay and sometimes even the best ending.

The movie, in a sense, has two endings; the first being when Ann and Joe say goodbye in the car and Ann walks away towards the castle. It could have ended there but instead the movie continues to show Joe’s reluctance to deliver on the exposé of the princess to his boss at the end of the film and then agree to go see her again for the press interview restores the audiences’ hope that they will reunite. When Joe returns as a reporter and Ann sees him, this is where I was expecting the traditional romantic comedy plot of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back to come full circle as all of the knowledge of the movie finally comes full circle. Princess Ann now sees who Joe really is and traditionally, this is where the girl would get mad at the boy, get in a fight, and then eventually forgive him as they end up together in the end. Yet, none of this happened and instead the movie ended with Joe walking down the long hallway and leaving without her.

I have a tendency to think that romantic comedies are more realistic than the average viewer; therefore, I had more hope that they would end up together in comparison to a regular audience member because of my own personal encounters with love. In short, the relationships in my family could all be their own romantic comedy. My parents were high school sweethearts that started dating when they were 17 and my grandparents eloped five months after dating, but the most far-fetched one and the one that could be made into a romantic comedy, the one that Roman Holiday reminds me of is my great grandparents story. My great grandma was 15 and met a man, at least 13 years older than she was. It remains a mystery when exactly he was born as no one can remember now, but it is a running joke in our family if he was born in 1899 or 1900, and he asked her out on a date. Back then it was not uncommon to date and marry that young and it was also not uncommon for there to be an age gap. Many women died during childbirth and many died from illness and also, since people married quickly and young, divorces were also not uncommon. So, my 15-year-old great-grandma brought an older divorced man with a child home to meet her parents and, not surprisingly, it did not go that well. Her parents told her they did not want her to date him, so he left. The next day, my great grandma leaves the house and then comes back later with the same man, but this time married to him. Realistically, the odds of that relationship working out were not that high, yet somehow it did, and they lived happily together for the rest of their lives and had two children along the way. The stories I have been told since I can remember are all uncommon, none are your everyday love story, but that is why when watching these romantic comedies, I root so hard for the characters to end up together. It doesn’t have to be practical, it doesn’t have to make the most sense, or even any sense at the time, but I have seen it work and still see those crazy stories work to this day and so why would I believe in anything different?

Those stories are the reason why the ending to Roman Holiday was so agonizing for me as when Joe Bradley returns at the end no argument, fighting, or hatred occurs, but instead Joe and Ann continue to look at each other with the love that they had developed for one another throughout the day. What I expected was for a fight to occur and then for them to somehow end up back together, for Joe Bradley to get the girl way out of his league. However, no fight occurs, and no reunion occurs except for a measly handshake as she finds a way to disguise her last interaction with him ever. This whole time I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the "happy ending" as it is clear that Ann enjoys the life she is experiencing with Joe much more than her own. Her day with Joe is her “green world” that she does not want to leave and because of the influence of expectations set by the other romantic comedies, I was expecting a happy ending, but instead at the end I was left in a state of disbelief; could they really not end up together? After the ending as I was reflecting on the movie and thinking about the significance of the ending, I realized that Anne and Joe not ending up together was perhaps the best ending the movie could have had, because if she had run off with him it would have been unrealistic as a princess cannot just run off and leave her duties, nor would the audience want a true princess to do that in real life. However, because they both ended the movie arguably happier than they were in the beginning of it, I then realized that the significance was that while they did not end up together and they did not get their "happy ending", they were happy. They would move on with their lives forever reflecting on what had happened as a happy memory instead of a heartbreak and that, to me, is the most realistic ending in any of the films that we have watched.

Some may argue that the film's ending is not a happy ending because they do not end up together and the ending long-shot with Joe walking out alone is a solemn moment, I argue the opposite. I argue that, yes while it is agonizing and borderline depressing that they have to walk away from each other, that it is a happy ending because they were able to have a great day together, a break from their normal lives, and because the ending is so realistic, the audience is able to find solace in that. As I brought up before, the movie in a sense had two endings but instead the film continued to provide the audience with a moment of full recognition when Joe returns to the press conference. The power in the press conference as a whole in the scene is the way its shots focus on Ann and Joe and the rest of the people are in the background or are not in focus—they do not stand out in the shot as much as Joe and Ann do. This shows how while there are probably close to one hundred people in the room, all Joe and Ann can do is focus on one another. Nothing else seems to matter to them as Joe is not taking notes like the rest of the reporters, and as Ann greets them all, all she can do is look at Joe. The power of this scene is that it is clear there are still feelings reciprocated by both and the way they focus on each other and block out everyone else shows how they could run off together just the two of them and be happy.

This power continues to the next scene where there is the long shot of Joe walking out. It is not a quick long shot either and lasts for about a minute. The significance in this is as the shot continues to last longer and longer the audience anticipates more and more that Ann is going to show up in the background and come running after him. The wait during this shot is agonizing, resembling how the characters feel walking away from each other. It then transitions to a medium shot of Joe’s face and his expression is not happy nor sad, but one that seems to show he is at peace with what has happened. It is clear with his hesitation and look back that he is thinking about her showing up behind him, but when he turns back around and walks out of the doors, this shot shows that he is okay with moving on. While it is clear Joe is not jumping for joy walking away from her, and even though we cannot see Ann I doubt she was either, the final scene gives us the sense that they are happier after having met each other than if they never would have. The power of this scene and the long shot is that we are waiting for them to get together, yet they never do. That is why the movie does not end with the car scene because then that power present in the ending would have been gone and both characters would have been left worse off than before they had met each other. The movie would have ended in a heartbreaking way but because the movie is able to have that moment of full recognition and then show how the characters are better off and happier having met each other, it allows the movie to have a happy ending even if it isn’t the happily ever after that typically occurs.

While the ending was the most realistic way that the film could have ended, because of my own personal examples of love, I still couldn’t let the fact that they did not end up together go.  I was left wondering what could have been, what their life would have been like, and how happy they would have been together. I was left wondering what if my parents had let long distance during college get in the way and do the practical and easy thing and broken up, what if my great grandma hadn’t had married my great grandpa on a gut feeling--I wouldn’t be here. Yes, I am a romantic and at times it can lead me to believe in things that will not work out and that are not for the best, but it also allows me to believe in love and believe that not all things are the easiest or what is the most realistic at the time. The choices that present themselves in the movie, that others would deem black and white and simple, I find myself not accepting the simplicity of the choices and trying to figure out a way that both duty and love can be chosen even if the realistic chance of that being possible is next to zero. My romantic optimism lead me to struggle with this ending as I could not stop myself from wondering “what if?”, but once my own prejudices and romanticisms are out of the picture, it becomes clear that Roman Holiday shows that sometimes the happy ending is not the two protagonists ending up together, but the two characters being happy in their own rights. That was a new take on happy endings that I had not been exposed to before and gave me a different perspective on how not everything is necessarily the happy ending that you hope for, but it is a happy ending in its own right.