HOT BLU-RAY NEWS
ONE OF Paramount Studios' all-time favorites "Roman Holiday" is making its way onto Blu-ray September 15.
Ranked as the No. 4 Greatest Love Story of All-Time by the American Film Institute, the William Wyler film earned 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won Best Actress for Hepburn, Best Costume Design for legendary designer Edith Head, and Best Writing for Dalton Trumbo.
The 1953 fairy tale was one of Hollywood’s first on-location motion pictures and memorably captures the bustling streets and iconic sites of Rome. "Roman Holiday" expresses the exhilaration of joyously breaking free as the lead character escapes her royal obligations against the backdrop of post-war Europe embracing long-awaited peace.
4K RESTORATION
The original 35mm negative was processed at a local film lab in Rome and was unfortunately badly scratched and damaged. The film had to be pieced back together, but the splices were so weak due to the 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.
In anticipation of this new Blu-ray release, the film was digitally restored using the Dupe Negative and a Fine Grain element to capture the best possible image. Every frame was reviewed, and the film received extensive clean up to remove thousands of scratches, bits of dirt, and other damage. Because audio elements to properly up-mix to 5.1 do not exist, the original mono track was remastered, and minor anomalies were corrected. The result is a film returned to its original vibrancy and beauty that remains true to director William Wyler’s vision.
No hint of a 4K disc will be released in the future like "It's a Wonderful Life" was released a year.
EXTRAS
Filmmaker Focus: Leonard Maltin on Roman Holiday
Behind the Gates: Costumes
Rome with a Princess
Audrey Hepburn: The Paramount Years
Dalton Trumbo: From A-List to Blacklist
Paramount in the '50s: Remembering Audrey
Theatrical Trailers
Four Photo Galleries: Production, The Movie, Publicity, The Premiere
Digital copy of the film