Love and Duty in Roman Holiday

Those seeking a great modern fairytale should consider Roman Holiday. Filmed in Italy, it has the perfect backdrop and superb casting. Audrey Hepburn plays Princess Anne in her film debut for which she won an Oscar. Gregory Peck as Joe Bradley is the handsome, charming, and heroic love interest. Many modern romance movies focus on individualism and self-fulfillment, but uniquely Roman Holiday focuses on duty.

Unlike many romantic comedies, Roman Holiday demonstrates that there are greater loves than the superficially romantic. It recognizes that duty toward one’s country and its people is a form of love and an objective good. True love goes beyond mere emotion and infatuation. Sometimes there are competing loves that cannot both be served, and Roman Holiday recognizes there exists an objective order to those loves that should be lived out even when it is not what makes us happiest in the moment. As Paul writes, love must “rejoice with the truth.” It must do so even when the truth is difficult to bear.  He writes that love requires that we, “Honor one another above yourselves.” Love that is focused on self-fulfillment is sentimental and indulgent. True love requires sacrifice.

Hepburn’s Princess Anne desperately wants to live a life free of the restraints and pressures of royal life. She wants autonomy and the ability to express herself. In her life as a princess, she is not even able to choose what clothes to wear to bed. One night during her trip to Rome, she sneaks out to have a bit of the freedom she desperately craves and meets Joe Bradley, an American reporter.

He recognizes the Princess but pretends not to, believing he has found his big break. Needing money, he and his friend conspire to spend the day with the unsuspecting princess to sell the story and photos to the papers. The day that follows is enchanting with Princess Anne getting her hair cut, eating gelato, and riding a moped through the streets of Rome. By the end of the day, the Princess and reporter have fallen in love.

Most of the movie is lighthearted and joyful, but it turns somber and poignant as Anne realizes that she must return to her royal duties without telling Joe who she is, and he realizes that he must let her go back to royal life without him. Anne tells him, “I have to leave you now. I’m going to that corner there and turn. You must stay in the car and drive away. Promise not to watch me go beyond the corner. Just drive away and leave me as I leave you.”

There is no debate over what must happen, no attempts to circumvent their realities. There is also no reflection on the lack of fairness of the circumstance. When reprimanded by her governess, Anne remarks if not for her duty to her family and country she would never have returned. Other than this brief moment, there is no other comment on Anne’s choice.

Joe too realizes that he has a duty to the woman he loves and forfeits the news story. In the final scene, they see each other one last time. The emotion of the moment is conveyed to the audience. The higher love has won, duty and the associated virtues have won, and even though it is bittersweet and heartbreaking, the goodness of the decision is apparent and shines through without contradiction or question. And each, by giving up the other, displays a far greater love than romantic sentiment, they enable one another to live out virtue and choose the higher good. They gift themselves to each other even though they cannot be together.

This starkly contrasts with today’s emphasis on romantic love to the exclusion of other goods and virtues. This can be seen in much of our modern cinema. Even Netflix’s The Crown, which had successfully focused on the importance of duty in its first five seasons, failed in its final season to do so. In an attempt to focus on the personal sacrifices made by Queen Elizabeth II, the audience is forced to watch multiple internal debates and dialogues between the ghosts of Elizabeth’s former self. This includes an odd internal dialogue where she contemplates abdicating and setting aside her duty and sacrifice for an imagined Elizabeth that she was “forced” to give up as queen. Viewers are subjected to endless discussion on the unfairness of the requirement to place duty, country, and monarchy over one’s self and one’s own desires. It is overly self-indulgent and a cheapening of the show’s longtime commitment to the sacrifice and unfailing duty displayed by the real Queen Elizabeth II.  

Prince Phillip, in the final episode of the season, remarks that monarchy no longer makes sense in the modern world. Sadly, a few generations after Roman Holiday, the duty and sacrifice required of good monarchs does make little sense to modern viewers. Hopefully, Roman Holiday can serve as a reminder that there is something deeply beautiful and good in duty, and this is especially true when it requires great sacrifice. Hopefully, it can also be a reminder that true love is the giving of one’s self to the other, enabling the other to live a fuller life of virtue.  If Joe and Anne had thrown aside duty to be together, Roman Holiday would be just another charming but unexceptional romcom. It is the beauty of their sacrifices that makes it memorable.