STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: FILM “Sabrina”

After growing up surrounded by two rich brothers who your father works for, you’d be hard pressed to move on to anyone else.

Directed by Billy Wilder, screenplay by Wilder, Samuel Taylor, and Ernest Lehman, and based on the play Sabrina Fair by Taylor, Sabrina is the story of the title character who is desperately in love with David Larrabee, the playboy of the Larabee brothers. David doesn’t think much of her because in his eyes, she is still a child.

After spending two years in France at a culinary school, she comes back as a gorgeous, mature woman whom David is now has eyes on, and she is glad about that. The problem is that he is engaged to an heiress that would be financially beneficial to both families, but he doesn’t care about that at all.

Who does care is his brother, Linus, the serious-minded businessman who set the marriage up. He successfully incapacitates David, and takes his place during a party, where Sabrina is expecting David, but instead, meets Linus. He consistently takes her out on dates so she won’t distract David.

Both realize that they might be in love with each other.

The story may come off like that ending in Grease where all the woman has to do is change the way she looks in order to get the guy he wants, but that’s not the case here. Sabrina was planning on going to Paris prior to the beginning of the film; the fact that she matured along the way just so happened to be… well, natural.

It’s also nice to see that she is attracted to both brothers, even though they can be inconsiderate in their own ways, though in Linus’ case, that’s because he doesn’t want to admit that he’s in love with her.

All three characters have an arc in the film, though Sabrina’s might have completed it early in the film. She leaves an impact on the brothers that make them realize about their feelings and responsibilities. That may sound like she’s a manic-pixie-dream-girl, but with this kind of story, it can’t be helped.

I was aware of the film when I was looking through the Paramount Centennial collection, after having collected Sunset Blvd. and (I think) Chinatown. It also helped that I was on a Billy Wilder kick.

Sabrina is a showcase of early Audrey Hepburn, her sensual side and the comedy side, and a different type of role for Humphrey Bogart. It has some clever dialogue, unexpected slapstick, and it’s just a romance story where you root for the characters to get together.