SABRINA

This 1954 romantic comedy directed by Billy Wilder was adapted from a successful play ‘Sabrina Fair’ by Samuel Taylor.  It features a romance between Sabrina, the daughter of a chauffeur, and Linus Larrabee, a wealthy individual whose family employs Sabrina's father.

Although Taylor was initially involved in the adaptation he departed the scene because he didn’t like the changes Wilder was making. 

Comparing the film with the plot synopsis of the play my guess is that the changes Taylor objected to relate to the central relationship between Sabrina and Linus.

Sabrina and Linus in the play are financial and intellectual equals, and committed idealists. 

Sabrina spends a couple of years in Paris as a private secretary, before returning to the US transformed into a sophisticated, beautiful and self-confident woman. And as a bonus it turns out that her father has been amassing a fortune on the stock market.

Whereas in the film Sabrina goes to Paris to attend a mere cookery course, and her father has not amassed a fortune.

The fact that in the film Sabrina and Linus are not equals is accentuated by the 30-year age gap between the actors who play them, Audrey Hepburn and of all people Humphrey Bogart.

(In the Broadway production Sabrina is played by Margaret Sullivan who was then in her mid-40s, Linus by Joseph Cotten, only some 4 years older).

This makes their romance (such as it is  - they don’t get to kiss or declare their love for each other) improbable to say the least.

Dour workaholic Linus starts wining and dining Sabrina as a way of scuppering her romance with his younger brother David in a cynical attempt to preserve an important business deal (I won’t bore you with the details) and ends up a few days later being so taken with her that he literally runs out of a board meeting so as to jump on the boat to Paris he has put her on. 

Quite why and when he developed such feelings for her is never convincingly shown.

The film was released less than a year after the play opened on Broadway, suggesting to me that perhaps the screenplay would have benefitted from some more time spent on it.  Ernest Lehman, who replaced Taylor, was still writing (or rewriting) parts of it during filming.

In ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and ‘Stalag 17’ Wilder made very good use of William Holden but here he is rather wasted as the dashing but lightweight womaniser, David.

Bogart does his best in a thankless role but the film belongs to Hepburn who single-handedly makes this romantic comedy (which is neither very romantic nor very comedic) an enjoyable concoction. 

Taylor went on to write a play ‘Avanti!’ which Wilder also made into a film.  Whether Taylor approved of that adaptation is unknown.

RATING: ✓ If You've Nothing Better To Do