Billy Wilder directed my absolute favorite romantic comedy of all time – THE APARTMENT. In SABRINA, he continues the magic. I saw the 1995 remake with Harrison Ford first, but it pales in comparison. Along with a win for legendary costume designer Edith Head, the film received five additional Oscar nominations, including Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress for Audrey Hepburn, in her second American film, receiving a second Oscar nomination.
Hepburn (WAIT UNTIL DARK) plays Sabrina Fairchild, the daughter of a rich family’s chauffeur, who has been in love with the Larrabee family’s younger playboy son David (William Holden, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI) since she was a little girl. Her father Thomas (John Williams, THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS) wishes she could just get over David, especially when she goes away to cooking school. When an older and more sophisticated Sabrina returns from Paris, David quickly becomes smitten with her, despite being engaged to Elizabeth Tyson (Martha Hyer, MY MAN GODFREY). This development greatly worries David’s older, more mature, brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart, THE AFRICAN QUEEN) and his cigar-smoking, liquor-drinking father Oliver (Walter Hampden, ALL ABOUT EVE), because Elizabeth’s father is the owner of a company that the Larrabees want to acquire. So, Linus sets out to get David out of the picture for a while and woo Sabrina himself. But what Linus doesn’t expect is that love happens.
The story is fairly straightforward, but the actors bring it to life. I’ve always been a great fan of Audrey Hepburn and she clearly displays in this film why she is a legend. She makes it look so easy. She doesn’t just make David and Linus fall in love with her; she does so to the audience. What can one ask more from their romantic female lead? I should not neglect the male performers. Both Bogart and Holden handle their characters with great ease. Bogart was a perfect choice for the all-work-and-no-play Linus. This was an age of movies when all the chief roles were played by movie stars, and that quality adds so much to the material.
The film is humorous and smart with a hint of melancholy when needed. It avoids all the traps of the romantic comedy genre with true sincerity. I believed the story because I believed the characters were who they said they were. This is cinematic entertainment at its most joyous.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
