The 1953 classic romantic comedy Roman Holiday will be joining the Paramount Presents Blu-ray collection on a September 15th, 2020 release date.
Roman Holiday stars Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. It nabbed 10 Academy Award nominations and secured three wins: Best Actress for Hepburn, Best Costume Design for designer Edith Head, and Best Writing for Dalton Trumbo.
The Paramount Presents Blu-ray line restores classic and modern films with new transfers. For older films like Roman Holiday, the restoration is more involved and delicate.
Here is what Paramount has to say about the Roman Holiday restoration:
The original 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.
Paramount Presents Roman Holiday Blu-ray bonus features include the following:
- 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
Pre-order Paramount Presents Roman Holiday on Blu-ray at Amazon.
