Until I saw 1954’s Sabrina, I didn’t realize there was a bad angle from which Audrey Hepburn could be photographed. And, yet, there is she, perched in a tree and looking slightly up and to the right of the camera. There is nothing in her appearance at this point which suggests the glamorous fashion icon she’s known as. At this point in the film, she is supposed to be a teenager, and she is gangly and awkward.
She is the daughter of the chauffeur (John Williams) of a wealthy Long Island family, and they live on their estate. In charming opening narration, she describes the estate to be “as close as one can get to heaven on Long Island.” Among the large number of people employed to maintain the house and its grounds, she mentions “a man of no particular title who took care of a small pool in the garden for a goldfish named George”.
She is hiding in a tree as she observes yet another of the lavish parties the family hosts regularly. She is smitten with William Holden, the playboy of the family, who pays her as little attention as he would any of the family’s belongings. She follows him to the indoor tennis court, where she watches him seduce a blond socialite (Joan Vohs) who annoyingly giggles all the time.
Hepburn, hating “girls that giggle all the time” and how they have a hold on Holden’s heart, overreacts a tad when she goes to the garage and turns on all eight cars while the bay doors are closed. In what I find a questionable attempt at humor, the oldest of the cars belches smoke rings from its tailpipe, to her stunned disbelief.
Humphrey Bogart, as Holden’s older brother, arrives in time to save her life. Being the serious businessman in the family, he was supposedly voted by his college class as “most likely to bequeath his alma mater $50 million.” Bogie is the counterweight to Holden’s playboy lifestyle. Holden’s previous three marriages, and other entanglements, have taken their toll on the family: “The last pair of legs that were something cost the family $25,000.”
Hepburn is sent away by her father to a culinary school in Paris, where she is transformed, and returns home as “Audrey Hepburn”. She is dressed in the most chic fashions of the time while waiting at the train station for her father to pick her up. Holden just happens to be driving by when he does a dramatic double-take, skidding to a stop and throwing the car in reverse. Not recognizing her, he offers to give her a lift. Conveniently, he’s going her way, so he is led to believe she is a neighbor, and he is shocked he can’t remember who she is.
This leads to the best scene in the picture. On this long drive, Holden keeps trying to guess which family she is a member of, while she coyly offers him vague but accurate information. She drops hints such as her father being in transportation. He is so baffled that he does not realize at first that they have arrived at his own family home. Upon discovering who she is, the guy is immediately smitten.
Holden’s pursuit of the family chauffeur’s daughter upsets everybody around him. His mother and father are displeased he is entangled with one of the “help”. Holden actually has a fiancée (Martha Hyer), but she seems to be relatively oblivious as to what is going on, focusing instead on the impending nuptials: “We drained the water from the indoor pool to make room for the wedding presents.” Heburn’s father is only worried she will be left with a broken heart: “You’re still reaching for the moon.” Her reply is one of the best lines I have ever heard in a film: “No, father, the moon’s reaching for me.”
Bogie is the most displeased of the lot. He has only arranged Holden’s marriage to Hyer because she is the daughter of the owner of the world’s second-largest sugar plantation. Bogie needs great quantities of the sweetener because the company’s scientists have developed a revolutionary new plastic made from the stuff. The resulting material is damn near indestructible, as it is fire-proof and bullet-proof. Its tensile strength is astounding, as Bogie has roughly a dozen women stand on a plank of the transparent material straddling two supports. I found myself wondering what was really used for this material in the film.
He decides to woo Hepburn away from Holden so as to not disrupt his wedding plans. Even in that era, it would have been hard to sell this May-September-of-next-year romance, but director Billy Wilder sells it by showing how preposterous this character regards his own scheme. Bogie stands in front of a mirror while wearing his old university clothes and despairs, “Just look at me. A freshman with a touch of arthritis.”
Almost more than the plot, dialog and lead performances, I was greatly impressed by the supporting cast and some odd bits of business they are given to do. Walter Hampden, as the family patriarch, is especially fascinating. In that scene where Bogie goes to his bedroom closet, he opens the door to find the old man inexplicably standing inside, staring straight ahead and holding the lit cigar he was trying to hide from his wife. There’s another neat moment where Hampden is desperately trying to get the last olive out of a tall, narrow jar. A bit near the end of the picture will cycle back to this for a great punchline.
I can’t say Sabrina is a flawless movie, but I was carried away by its charms. While the plot requires more than a little suspension of disbelief, nobody comes to a picture like this excepting cinema verité. It is a film overflowing with wonders big and small. It is that rarest of things where we feel special just having witnessed it, to even briefly feel the moon is reaching for us.
Dir: Billy Wilder
Starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden
Watched on blu-ray