Sabrina - 1954

Oh I love it, I've always loved it. I watched it again tonight after many years, and I totally loved it. Audrey Hepburn, so beautiful, so elegant, so graceful, and her Sabrina, so so lovely, and in a way very much a normal girl in which we all see ourselves. Also everything else, from the beginning (well, not so much the very end maybe, and one scene in the middle..).
The Larrabee family is indeed more than just rich: the big house with indoor and outdoor tennis-courts and swimming-pools, and eight cars, and the big garden don't really give you the right idea, until you see the 'Larrabee skyscraper' that would make Tony Stark envious, and it was 1954.. the car with the phone and the dictaphone are the least.
Sabrina grew up near all that, the daughter of their chaffeur, and she had always been in love with the younger Larrabee brother, David (William Holden). She would stay up in a tree and watch the big parties, and watch him courting other girls, and cry over him. Obviously she was never invited because she was 'staff' :-/
Silly girl, thinking of killing herself over such a thing. How could that be love!?! Then she went to Paris to learn cooking and stayed there for two years (now, if they did a whole lesson on boiling water, and another whole lesson on breaking eggs the right way, how is it possible that it only lasted two years, to learn about soufflé, soup, sauces, and everything?)
I liked when the old Baron told her "a woman happily in love, she burns the soufflé. A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven" , I don't know why but I love it, it sounds very right to me :-) I liked a little less when he says "stop looking like a horse" because she always had a ponytail, but I understand. I like ponytails, and yet he is right, I know.
I loved when Mr Fairchild (her father) and the other servants read her letters and commented on them, I loved their comments: she doesn't think of David anymore "that's good" except at night "that's bad":lol: I loved those moments. Then the older brother Linus ( si pronuncia lainus :-p) played by Humphrey Bogart, decides to marry David off to the daughter of another rich businessman, so that the two companies can merge. Here it  comes the only thing that really bores me, the long speech, Linus going on and on about how he doesn't care about money, how he works to create progress so that new factories are made and poor people can find jobs and poor children can wear shoes.. how lovely coming from one who has millions. It's easy for millionaires to 'not care about money', since they have it, and so much they never have to worry about it. The problem is when one doesn't have it and they one must care or they won't be able to pay their taxes and their bills and they'll be ruined.
Anyway.
After two years Sabrina comes back with a new haircut and pretty clothes and David doesn't recognize her and falls for her and she's radiant. She goes to his party dreaming of being his girl, and everything seems to go well until his family gets in the way. If David doesn't marry this Elizabeth the whole merging-business will be ruined, and they won't let it happen. His father is furious but Linus is the thinker in the family. He pretends to be on his side and has him sit down knowing very well that David has two champagne-glasses hidden in his back pockets, so he will be out of the game for a few days, giving Linus time to deal with the situation.
Linus goes to talk to Sabrina but realizes right away she's the romantic type and therefore it'd be quite useless to try to buy her off, so he devices a plan: to have her fall in love with him instead of David, then send her away with a trick.
He starts by dancing with her and kissing her like David would have done, then he takes her out every day. He tells her he had his heart broken twice, and that once he even thought of jumping off the ledge of his tall skyscraper for love. He takes her to dinner, on a boat trip, to watch 'the seven year itch' with Marilyn Monroe, dancing... and he talks to her about being alone "no man walks alone from choice", and about how finding someone really nice is more difficult than ordering some rain in Paris, and he says things like "how do you say in French 'my brother has a lovely girl'? and how do you say 'I wish I were my brother'? " which for some reason always takes my breath away and makes me speechless just like Sabrina.
He tells her that if she were not in love with David he'd ask her to go to Paris with him, that he's tired of everything and wants to run away.... oh he's good, and she buys every word and falls for him. Her father is both worried and disturbed:
Fairchild:" I like to think of life as a limousine. It's all well driving together but we must remember our places. There's a front seat and a back seat and a window in between"
Linus: "I never realized it before but you're a terrible snob"
However, Linus falls for her too, of course, and when she comes to him the last night before he's supposed to leave for Paris (to tell him she can't go out with him) he talks to her and she cries, sort of confessing her feelings for him, until she sees the two tickets for Paris and she's suddenly happy, radiant again, believing he wants her to go with him, but before such a smile , such words, and those tears and everything, Linus can't go through with it and he confesses to her that he planned to leave his own cabin empty, to send her alone, because of David and the business and she "got in the way".
Sabrina: "how inconsiderate of me and how inconvenient for you. Such a busy man having to waste so much time just to get me on a boat"
Linus: "I'm ashamed to say I enjoyed every minute of it" : a line that is taken the good way from those who are watching the movie, but I guess that if I were the girl involved I might take it the wrong way, the bad way, like 'I enjoyed my perfect plan to get rid of you'.
Then of course she refuses all the gifts he had prepared for her (apartment, car, shares) , only "I'll just take one of those tickets. I was happy in Paris. I think you would have been too", then she goes away: "Goodnight Mr Larrabee, I'm sorry I can't stay to do the dishes", funny and sad at the same time, because she was being sent away because she was part of 'the staff'. She goes away very sad. She got over David, yes, but "I'm cured. Now how to get over the cure".
Luckily David is not a bad person, he can tell a love-you-kiss from a goodbye-kiss, and he works out the reason, and understands their feelings. Linus is so much in love that he's now planning to cancel the wedding and the merging and the whole business just to send David to Paris with Sabrina, but David doesn't go. Instead he provokes Linus to get a reaction, sort of insulting Sabrina until Linus punches hi, which proves he loves her ( ...?) so Linus runs off, has a boat taking him to Sabrina's ship and joins her. I've always thought I'd have liked a different ending scene, instead of that silly thing of hanging his umbrella on a passing-by man's coat, but well, nothing can be 100% perfect, can it now?
Just one more thing: I loved Linus' line to David: that he told Sabrina how David would not listen to his father's objections to her, that "you stood up like a man, and sat down like a jerk" :lol:
*sigh* this is so romantic, and the songs 'isn't it romantic?' and 'la vie en rose' are so perfect here, and I can't hear them without thinking of Sabrina dancing with Linus.
"I wish I were my brother" *sigh* oh a tough man fighting his feelings and his love tormenting him, this is always a hit, in every movie. What girl can not love this? I can't, I love it. Always have, always will. :-)