Sabrina

Dir: Billy Wilder

1954

****

The goings on behind the scenes are just as famous as the film itself in Billy Wilder’s 1954 romantic classic Sabrina. The lead actor hated everyone, the other two leads fell in love and had an affair and the director, who would end a 12-year business relationship with the studio after the film’s release, was so up against it, he asked the actors to fake sickness so he’d have a chance to catch up. Sabrina is a bonafide classic but one wonders whether it could have been better with one or two slight changes. Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) is the young daughter of the Larrabee family's chauffeur, Thomas (John Williams), and has been in love with David Larrabee (William Holden) all her life. David is a three-times-married playboy who has never paid attention to Sabrina because to him she was still a child. Eavesdropping on a party at the Larrabee mansion, as she has often done before, Sabrina notices David enticing yet another woman. Distraught, she leaves her father a suicide note and starts every car in the garage so as to kill herself. Instead she is interrupted by David's older brother, Linus (Humphrey Bogart), who escorts her back to her quarters above the garage. Sabrina had been on the point of sailing for France, where she is to attend a culinary school in Paris. After two years there, she returns home as an attractive and sophisticated woman. When her father is delayed from picking her up at the station, David offers her a lift instead without even knowing it is Sabrina. Once David realizes who she is, he is quickly drawn to Sabrina and invites her to join him at a party at the mansion. When Linus sees this, he fears that David's imminent marriage to Elizabeth Tyson may be endangered. If the engagement is broken, it would ruin a profitable opportunity for a great corporate merger between Larrabee Industries and Elizabeth's very wealthy father's business. Instead of confronting David about his irresponsibility, Linus pretends to sympathise with him and in a moment of inattention David sits down on champagne glasses he has placed in his pockets, so that he is incapacitated for a few days. Linus now takes David’s place with Sabrina on the pretext that “it’s all in the family” until both fall in love, although neither will admit it. In fact Linus’ plan is to pretend to be accompanying Sabrina back to Paris but not to join her on the liner. However, when he reveals his intention to Sabrina instead, she agrees to leave the next day and never come back. The following morning, Linus has second thoughts and decides to send David to Paris with Sabrina. This means calling off David's wedding with Elizabeth and the big Tyson deal, and he schedules a meeting of the Larrabee board to announce this. However, David enters the room at the last minute and declares that he has decided to marry Elizabeth after all. David helps Linus recognize his own feelings for Sabrina and assists him in rushing off to join Sabrina's ship before it leaves harbor. Linus and Sabrina meet on board and sail away together. The story is flawed way before the film is. I hate how suicide has been so poorly handled in love stories. You have to go back to Romeo & Juliet to find its origins but since then, particularly in older films of the 40s and 50s, it has been used out of context and in a irresponsible manner. We look back at films like Sabrina and comment on the love story without once questioning Sabrina’s mental state or the actions of the two brothers. Everything about it, when you really think about it, is deplorable and not romantic at all. It’s horrific really, but Hepburn’s eyes, Holden’s charm and Bogart’s voice somehow make people overlook such things. I like the film because I like watching Bogart, Hepburn and Holden, not because I like either the story or the characters. Initially, Cary Grant was considered for the role of Linus, but he declined, supposedly because he did not want to carry an umbrella onscreen but I don’t know how true that really is. The role was taken by Bogart. Best known for playing tough detectives and adventurers, Bogart was cast against type as a smart businessman gradually transformed into a romantic lead. He was something of a last minute replacement and he knew, just like everyone else did, that he wasn’t really right for the part. He was very unhappy during the filming, convinced that he was totally wrong for this kind of film, mad at not being Wilder's first choice, and not liking Holden or Billy Wilder. Bogart also disapproved of Audrey Hepburn and he wanted his wife Lauren Bacall in the role. Asked how he liked working with Hepburn, Bogart replied: "It's OK, if you don't mind to make a dozen takes." During production of the film, Hepburn and Holden entered into a brief but passionate and much-publicized love affair but Hepburn called it off once she learned that Holden couldn’t bare children. Bogart later apologized to Wilder for his behavior on set, citing problems in his personal life but by that time the stories were infamous. Wilder began shooting before the script was even finished, and Lehman was writing all day to complete it. Eventually he would finish a scene in the morning, deliver it during lunch, and filming of it would begin in the afternoon. Considering the film’s many problems, the final result is pretty miraculous. For all of the problems the film though, I do find it funny just how many times Wilder managed to mention the play The Seven Year Itch – the next film project with a new studio. The reality is that the film isn’t as special as all that but it is, and always will be, a joy to watch the four giant film makers at work.