Sabrina is a fairytale love story set around themes of rivalry and
class. Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) is a chauffer’s daughter, living on a
large Long Island Estate. For some time she’s been in love with the rich and
careless David Larrabee (William Holden) who barely notices her. After two
years studying in Paris,
the grownup Sabrina returns a beautiful and sophisticated woman and David falls
in love. The couple’s relationship threatens to derail a big merger for the
family company so David’s brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) decides to woo the
girl himself before packing her back off to Paris.
This film is one of several in my
girlfriend’s DVD collection that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while.
Hepburn is her favourite actress but it was Sabrina
I chose over other films because of the male stars. I’ll happily watch anything
Bogart and Holden are in but have to say that I was a little disappointed with
this film. The stars failed to gel on screen and a little reading tells me that
Bogart was unhappy for the duration of the shoot with both director Billy
Wilder and his co-star Hepburn who he believed needed too many takes to get her
dialogue right. There was better chemistry between Holden and Hepburn which
isn’t surprising as the two began a brief affair while shooting the movie.