We Should Believe In Fairy-tales!- Even If They Don’t Always Come True by Ja'el

Ja’el Thomas

April 20, 2020

Professor Sinowitz

Romantic Comedy

We Should Believe In Fairy-tales!- Even If They Don’t Always Come True

     “I hate this nightgown. I hate all my nightgowns, and I hate all my underwear too,” Princess Anne (Audrey Hepburn) says in Roman Holiday. This was the beginning of the breakdown that soon followed as Anne realized her whole life was being dictated to her and that she didn’t have much of a choice. When Princess Anne breaks into hysterics, she is sedated, once again being reminded that she is being controlled. Although most of us aren’t royalty, society often does something similar to all of us; it dictates who it thinks we should be and what we should do, through our parents, teachers and peers. 

             As soon as Anne decides to break out of the stigma and finally live life the way she wants to, she is punished by being made to return by her duty to her country. Sure, what she is returning to is being a princess, but it is not what she wants to be. What good is all the money in the world and the greatest status if you’re not happy? Perhaps what others think is the best option, may not always be the best option for us. The fact that Anne returns to her country without being able to bring Joe, her true love, really startled me. Watching the film for the first time, I expected to find her rewarded for breaking the rules and pushing the boundaries because that is what we often see in movies. However, when I think about it, that kind of reward is rather silly. In real life people are seldom rewarded for pushing against the boundaries. Sure, her memories could be seen as her reward, but are the memories enough? Many of my classmates posted views, including me, that suggested that Anne not ending up with Joe is the realistic ending that most romantic comedies don’t offer. However, the more I thought about it, the more conflicted I felt. Why does this have to be a realistic ending, and what does this say about the society we live in? 

       I found myself wishing that Anne would defy society one more time and seize her happy ending, but she didn’t. This has me pondering what this ending communicates to the audience and whether we are doomed to conform. Well, most of us are, in some way or form. I want to be an actress. Well, “why are you in college?”, many have asked. When I was younger, I was told, “Go to college and get a good education, that way you have more than one option.” Sound advice, but now that I’m here, I’m not fully sure how I am going to use it if and when I become an actress. My intended career is tough to enter; I’m not naive. I also don’t want to try to pursue it and be a starving artist, so I ponder my future and stress about my future, just like princess Anne. Everyone tells me to go for something practical, like a doctor or lawyer, but it’s just not what I want to be, even though there is the comfort of steady employment and money. Princess Anne has the chance to rule a country, but it’s just not what she wants to be. Her real fairytale doesn’t even really start until she steps outside of the ‘palace walls’ and meets Joe.

        Anne leaves the palace, woozy on the drugs from the royal medic. When Joe walks by and sees her, he has the chance to be like any regular guy and keep going, but he turns into a knight in shining armor as he lets her stay with him instead of giving her to the police. Then they have all of Rome for their green world as they get to do all the things that Anne has always wanted to do but never could. They slowly fall in love as they go from place to place. It’s gradual. A dolly shot captures Joe as he looks back at Anne, and they smile at each other, riding on his scooter. He watches her as she watches the Wall, vicariously enjoying her experiences. The fact that they are living a fairy-tale is even referenced when they are at the Wall of Wishes and Anne suggests they go dancing and says, “And then at midnight, I’ll turn into a pumpkin and drive away in my glass slipper.” So when Joe responds, “And that’ll be the end of the fairy-tale.”, he foreshadows the end of their fairy-tale. After the excitement wears off from the fighting the secret service agents and swimming in the river to get away, there’s a close up/double shot as they look into each other's eyes, and then Joe kisses her. This is the climax of their fairytale, telling the audience that they have fallen in love. Then the clock strikes 12, symbolically of course, and she has to return back to her ‘castle’. Unfortunately this ends the fairytale because when they meet again, they don’t end up together.

 

            Because the film does not end like the typical fairytale, for some, this makes it real. It’s almost a morbid way of viewing it. It makes me wonder, have we as a society so often been told that we can’t have a fairytale that we believe it? I get it though, divorce rates are at about fifty percent, and there are a lot of guys out there who make us lose hope in genuinely good men, like how Joe and Irving were in the beginning of the film. Then when most rom-coms tell the audience that marriages result in happy endings, they become skeptical because they don’t see it often in real life. My parents got divorced when I was really young, but that never stopped me from believing that marriage could turn out better for me. Just like when I see people fail trying to achieve their dreams, it doesn’t stop me from believing, I can achieve mine. I say all that to say, there’s hope. I know that Roman Holiday ended the way it did because it didn’t want to get the audience’s hopes up, just to be let down by ‘reality’, but I still think there could be something between Joe and Anne. I have hope like Joe did at the end of the film. 

                It is the last scene of the film, when everyone walks away, and Joe stands there with his arms crossed, expectant. The camera frames Joe in a half body shot and a double shot, as Irving hesitates to leave. He looks at Joe, follows his gaze, looking at the door, and then he looks down as he walks away. Almost as if he knows that the princess won’t return, but allowing his friend to believe anyway as he leaves him there. Meanwhile Joe does not return his friend's gaze, but stares earnestly at the door, unmoving. The shot cuts to the empty doorway and then cuts back to Joe who finally moves from his still position, putting his hands in his pocket, hesitating slightly and then turning to leave. We now see Joe in a long shot, as the camera moves on a dolly, retreating in front of Joe, the now almost empty room. It’s a three quarter shot that captures him as he walks away. The audience can’t view his feet, but we can hear the steps as they are the only sound in the now vacant room. His mouth quirks to the side slightly in disappointment, and then his face straightens as he walks toward the camera in a tracking shot. Then, I believe, he starts to smile only the slightest bit as a small dimple appears in his cheek, perhaps remembering what they shared. As he nears the end, his footsteps slow, and he turns back one more time and looks at the door. He nods ever so slightly to himself, looks down, pauses and then resumes walking with the small smile reappearing. He walks out of frame as the music builds. The slightly melancholy music begins shortly after he begins walking, featuring a lot of crescendos, meaning that the music is building upon itself. 

                This scene suggests to me that perhaps Joe didn’t exactly give up. The key thing to note here is that the camera is facing him most of the time during this scene. If it were facing his back as he walked away, one could interpret it as a closed window of opportunity, but he was facing the audience. This means to me that the window of opportunity could still be open, if only slightly. I think it is possible that Joe will try again to get back his princess.

            When I went back, to review the last scenes of the film, I realized that princess Anne did take stances to stick up for herself in the end. She fought back to become her own person and matured into a young woman. When she returns, she chooses to tell her advisers only what she wishes about her journey, then she dismisses them firmly and resolutely. When the countess grabs her milk and crackers, she declines and also tells her “that will be all. Thank you, countess.” She is no longer a doormat to her advisers, nor a robot taking orders, but for the first time appears to be a queen.  Her face stoic as she dismisses them, not budging, making it clear that she will be the one giving the orders now. She’s all grown up. In a way, this is the movie’s way of saying that just because there are tough decisions in life that must be made, you can be bold and still take control of your own life. She says I would now like to meet some of the ladies and gentlemen of the press even though her advisers were about to wrap it up. She does this all so she can be with Joe one last time. As she walks down the stairs, and they try to follow her, she pauses, silently telling them to ‘wait here and let me do this on my own. I can handle it. I can handle my own life.’

            These scenes pushed me to change how I interpreted the movie. It’s like the saying, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Except with a twist, when life gives you lemons, grow up, and just eat the lemon. I think that was what she was doing here. If she had not gone back, it would have been selfish because she would be leaving her country without a ruler. So she returns, being the person of good character, but also does it her own way. It’s as if she realizes for the first time, the power of her identity and that she is the royal, not her advisers. She takes control of the life that was handed to her.

          Overall, I think this film is not necessarily saying that you can’t have a happy ending, but that sometimes you have to make the tough decisions. My tough decision will be to pursue acting even though it will be difficult. This is why I don’t want to applaud realism like the rest of the class. I don’t want to support the idea that fairy-tales are unrealistic because it’s like saying my dream of acting is unrealistic, and I refuse to believe that. What’s practical and what’s real all depends on one’s effort to make their own reality, and your reality is a reflection of your strongest belief. In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.