Audrey Hepburn LACMA Series: ROMAN HOLIDAY, SABRINA
Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
“Audrey Hepburn: Then, Now and Forever” Intro
Screening schedule and synopses from LACMA’s press release:
Roman Holiday
October 23 | 7:30 pm | Introduction by Peter Bogdanovich
Cloistered in a Roman palace on a brief state visit and yearning for a taste of la dolce vita, a young princess from an unnamed European country breaks curfew and hits the town, where too much champagne propels her straight into the arms of an accommodating American—a reporter who knows an exclusive story when it wakes up in his apartment, needing coffee and a new outfit for the scooter. Love blossoms when they set off on a magical mystery tour of the great monuments of the Eternal City; but as protocol and a ticking clock gradually darken this enchanting fairy tale, Wyler shifts the tone of the film from light-hearted to bittersweet. According to Wyler, “it was marvelous to shoot in Rome (and) Audrey was absolutely enchanting… There were practically no automobiles in 1952, only scooters, and I had a choice of four locations for each scene. A director’s dream.” Off camera, Peck fell in love with a French reporter whom he married a year later, and Audrey landed on the cover of Time magazine a week after the film premiered at Radio City Music Hall. A star was born.
1953/b&w/118 min. | Scr: Ian McLellan Hunter, John Dighton; dir: William Wyler; w/ Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck.
They All Laughed
October 23 | 9:40 pm
Private detectives Gazzara and Ritter follow two women (Stratten in her first starring role, and Hepburn in her last) suspected of cheating on their husbands around Manhattan. “Shot entirely on location, this improvisatory film captures a New York rarely seen in movies. Bogdanovich avoided well-known locations, instead finding landmarks known only to New Yorkers—brownstone apartment buildings, marble courthouses, hip shoe stores, white sidewalks, busy street-corners. Propelled by a soundtrack that mixes country hits with pop standards by Sinatra and Louie Armstrong, the film at times feels like a musical, with its long dialogue-free sequences of characters following each other, bumping into each other, watching each other through windows, falling in love. In places They All Laughed is so unabashedly personal that certain viewers may flinch from the self-exposure. Ritter’s character is openly a Bogdanovich surrogate and he helps Stratten escape an overbearing, jealous husband. The romance between Hepburn and Gazzara is rooted in their real-life affair, and the regret felt by Hepburn’s character references her own status as an aging star. This is less a work of fiction than a scrapbook of emotions and moods, a kind of memoir-as-cinema; and the film refuses to deliver the expected happy ending—the love here is avowedly not meant to be.”—Patrick McKay, Stylus Magazine.
1981/color/115 min. | Scr/dir: Peter Bogdanovich; w/ Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, John Ritter, Dorothy Stratten.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
October 24 | 7:30 pm
Truman Capote’s sardonic novella, about an aspiring writer who moves to New York and becomes embroiled in the troubled life of the beautiful girl next door, was adapted by writer Axelrod into a romantic comedy in which two attractive misfits look for love and truth in a now-vanished New York of fire escapes, two-toned cabs and bohemian parties. Hepburn was not the obvious choice to play the unstable Holly Golightly, a backwoods runaway who consorts with gangsters and survives on $50 for the powder room, but she is brilliant in the role: not only does she epitomize the stylish, adorable eccentric at the core of Edwards’s film, she projects the frustration and despair of Capote’s hooker who, despite her façade of New York sophistication, is surrounded by super rats and increasingly afflicted by the mean reds, a condition cured only by window shopping at Tiffany’s at dawn. “Standing outside Manhattan’s famous jewelry store in the film’s opening scene, the actress never looked more luminous or enchanting. Add classic cinematic moments like Hepburn singing Henry Mancini’s “Moon River,” or searching for her beloved cat named Cat in the pouring rain, and you have one of Hollywood’s most unforgettable romantic dramas.”—1000 Movies You Must See Before You Die.
1961/color/115 min. | Scr: George Axelrod; dir: Blake Edwards; w/ Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal, Mickey Rooney.
Two for the Road
October 24 | 9:35 pm
Two for the Road is a loving yet realistic portrait of one British couple whose marital ups and downs over a 15-year period are seen only during their annual car trips in Europe. Raphael’s meticulously constructed and often sardonic script (later nominated for an Oscar) uses repeated dialogue and recurring locations—plus changing fashions in cars, clothes and hair styles—as visual cues that allow Donen to cut among road trips past, present and future, thus providing a multifaceted view of a relationship shaped by optimism, coincidence, habit, and harsh confrontation. Hepburn, whom Donen envisioned in the role of the wife, overcame her initial reluctance to play a character who commits adultery, and understandable doubts about a wardrobe consisting of twenty-nine trendy outfits none of them by Givenchy, and (in Donen’s words) “was entirely cooperative,” thus freeing her favorite director to draw from her “a depth of emotion, care, yearning and maturity… that makes it Audrey’s best performance.” For many, Two for the Road is also Donen’s best performance: “It stands the test of time. It is his most personal film and his most passionate. It moves to his rhythm. It reflects his originality. And it has a lyricism all its own.”—Stephen Silverman, Dancing on the Ceiling.
1967/color/112 min./Panavision | Scr: Frederic Raphael; dir: Stanley Donen; w/ Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney, Jacqueline Bisset, William Daniels, Eleanor Bron, Claude Dauphin.
Sabrina
October 30 | 7:30 pm
Building on the success of Roman Holiday, Paramount cast Hepburn as Sabrina, the daughter of a chauffeur on a Long Island estate who has been transformed from an ugly duckling into an elegant swan after two years in Paris. Formerly invisible to the two wealthy brothers who employ her father, Sabrina now finds herself juggling the attentions of a handsome party boy with three ex-wives and a fiancée, and those of his older brother, a dour businessman who feigns romantic interest to keep her from interfering with his brother’s lucrative marriage. Billy Wilder, one of the studio’s top directors, had honed his comedy skills at Paramount during the reign of Ernst Lubitsch, and, though he shared none of his mentor’s affection for the foibles of the rich, he brought a sophistication and wit to the film that delighted audiences and allowed his leading lady to shine. “It’s a Cinderella story that gets turned on its head, a satire about breaking down class and emotional barriers, and a confrontation between New World callousness and Old World humanity. And getting to this characteristic Wilder reversal of roles is romantic, funny and astringent all at the same time.—Time Out.
1954/b&w/113 min. | Scr: Billy Wilder, Samuel Taylor, Ernest Lehman; dir: Billy Wilder; w/ Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden.
Subscribe / Syndicate
Leave a Comment
Tags: Audrey Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn: The Now and Forever, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Classic Movies, LACMA, Los Angeles Screenings, Roman Holiday, Sabrina, They All Laughed, Two for the Road
Comments
Leave a Reply
NOTE:
All comments are moderated and may take some time before they are posted. Different views and opinions are welcome, but courtesy is imperative. Rude/crass/bigoted comments and name-calling of any sort will be immediately deleted.
Also, please be aware that the Alternative Film Guide has no contact information for the talent mentioned in this blog and no information pertaining to or access to distributors'/producers' film prints.
