Sabrina (1954) – I
recently wrote that Silver Linings Playbook
revived my faith in the romantic comedy genre, and Billy Wilder’s Sabrina is a reminder of the heights to
which that genre had previously been taken.
Audrey Hepburn stars as chauffeur’s daughter Sabrina Fairchild; back
from Parisian cooking school with a new veneer of class, Sabrina sets her sights
on her father’s wealthy employer David Larrabee (William Holden), but David’s
brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) needs to distract Sabrina long enough for David
to marry a sugarcane heiress. I won’t
spoil the scheme, but I’m sure you know how it ends. What can we say about Hepburn? She’s gorgeous, a real vision, and she’s at
her best when she brings out that coy smile to show how much she appreciates David’s
attention. As for Holden, his turn as
pretty-boy David is a departure from his cynical characters from earlier Wilder
flicks Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17, but he handles it with
cocksure aplomb and two unforgettable bits of physical comedy (without spoiling
anything, those in the know will recall the champagne glasses and the conference
table). But it’s Bogart who’s the real
surprise, a far cry from his noiristic detectives and silent tough guys; Bogart
downright steals the film as Linus Larrabee, who affects puppy-love and
industrial acumen with surprising success, such that you might have a hard time
figuring out which is the real Linus and which the performance (and rightly
so). It seems like so many movies I
review here are so laden with gravitas that it’s difficult to breathe, so Sabrina is a welcome note of levity.
That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!
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