Review of Sabrina, directed by Billy Wilder

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog, and fell back more into literary criticism. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

Because I was on a tight budget and could only afford so many streaming subscriptions while unemployed, I spent a lot of time acquainting myself with my local library system and what movie options they give us. I have always been pleasantly surprised they give us Kanopy for free, but their DVD selection is actually superb too.

I picked out Sabrina from my local library branch, then had a movie night with my mother. This was a decade before her time in the world, but she had never seen an Audrey Hepburn movie before, so that’s why I asked her if she wanted to join in.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble in the introduction too much.

The driver’s daughter finds herself in a romance with her wealthy employer’s son, much to some people’s dismay.

Our protagonist in this movie is the titular character: Sabrina. She is a young woman and the only daughter of a chauffeur to a wealthy family known as the Larrabees. While they live simple lives on the estate, living and working with the family, Sabrina has been harboring a lifelong crush on the Larrabee son David.

David is someone your parents warn you about, despite having a ton of money. He’s been married three times, with none of these marriages working out, and he’s someone who doesn’t really work or provide for himself. He just kind of relies on the family money; but worst of all, he doesn’t pay attention to Sabrina at all.

One night, the Larrabee patriarch hosts a big party right before Sabrina plans to move to Paris and go to cooking school. She watches from the darkness as David invites a woman into an indoor tennis court, which makes her realize that David isn’t actually into her like she thought she was.

Sabrina decides the next step is suicide, leaves a note for her sleeping father, and then turns on all of the cars in the garage so the carbon monoxide kills her. However, David’s older brother Linus spots her in the garage after checking out all of the commotion, then takes her back into her room before she manages to actually kill herself.

She heads off to Paris the next day, and dramatically does not do well in cooking school, but transforms her self into a chic Parisian in the two years she’s there. She has to come home eventually though, and when her father fails to show up on time at the station, David stops, as he sees a pretty woman, and offers her a ride.

When they get back to the house he comes to realize who exactly she is, then invites her to their next party. At the party, he brings her to the tennis court where he brings his other women, and Linus watches all of this go down and realizes his brother is ruining his upcoming engagement. He does the math and realizes if the engagement breaks off, then their family’s business is going to suffer.

Linus tricks David into sitting with champagne bottles in his pockets, knocking him out of the running for a few days. Linus goes out with Sabrina because David can’t, but then actually falls in love with her. She falls in love too, but then he makes a grandiose plan where he’s going to go to Paris with her and run away, but it’s a trick in some ways to get her away from David.

She does find out about the plans, and then agrees to go to Paris and leave the Larrabee family alone. She’s hurt by what Linus has done to her, but the next day he realizes how much he wants this too. He asks David to go with Sabrina, but at the board meeting for the merger to be called off, David struts in and tells his brother to go after the girl.

Linus goes onto a tugboat and chases after Sabrina, and the two sail to France together, happy they can actually act on their romantic feelings.

Overall Thoughts

This was such a fifties movie! My mother even described it as simple after watching it, and it really does feel that way throughout. These were simpler times when it came to filmmaking in many different ways (although the diversity question really comes up—but, again, this is the fifties we’re talking about in the USA), and as a modern viewer this can feel pretty refreshing.

Regardless, the age gap is a bit weird, but understandable for the time. Audrey feels and looks like a teenager fresh out of the cradle, at the cusp of adulthood, while Humphrey Bogart looks like an old man going for a younger woman. Like their relationship is kind of cute plot wise, but I wish they were closer in age.

Go give this one a chance if you’re interested! Personally, I don’t think I am going to rewatch it anytime soon, but I am glad I had the chance to see it at least once.

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