SABRINA and The Second Time Around

After the unqualified success of her pseudo-debut film in ROMAN HOLIDAY, Audrey Hepburn suddenly found herself in high demand.  In the aftermath of winning her Best Actress Academy Award, she subsequently signed a seven-movie deal with Paramount, with a year-long gap in between each film to allow her to continue her stage career as well.  She made the cover of TIME in September of 1953.  The next year, her follow-up film premiered.

Ah, yes, that dreaded follow-up effort.  A term that applies more to music artists than it does actors (who really normally appear in multiple things before getting that first big “breakout” thing that achieves them that “overnight sensation” tag; Audrey Hepburn herself is a case in point), the sophomore slump is nevertheless very real.  And really, it makes sense; it can be really, really hard to maintain an initial first impression, especially when that first impression involves winning an Oscar.  How many actors’ careers frankly peaked after being given an Academy Award?

To seemingly compound things, Audrey appeared to be staying in a specific lane.  To follow up on ROMAN HOLIDAY, she was cast in…another romantic comedy, only this time, she finds herself being pursued by two men, both highly sought after leading men in Humphrey Bogart and William Holden.  The film would be directed by another Hollywood legend, Billy Wilder and it would also lead her to another Academy Award nomination.  Sounding familiar yet?

All that being said, I’m delighted to report that SABRINA is actually quite fun, maybe even a bit better than ROMAN HOLIDAY.  It turns out if you go from a movie with two marquee stars to one with three, it really is 50% more entertaining!  Sometimes, the math just works out.

This time, however, Audrey may have actually been overshadowed by one of her co-stars, as well as have had her life changed by the other.

SABRINA (1954)

Directed by: Billy Wilder

Starring: Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, Humphrey Bogart

Released: September 23, 1954

Length: 113 minutes

Based off of Samuel Taylor’s play Sabrina Fair, SABRINA tells the story of the daughter of a chauffeur, who lives with her father on the property of the powerful Larrabee family.  Her entire life, Sabrina (Hepburn) has had her eyes and heart set on David Larrabee (Holden), a man who has been married multiple times, divorced just as many, and is just as happy to be freewheeling and fancy free.  Needless to say, he doesn’t even know Sabrina exists.

Lovesick, Sabrina does the only thing a girl in her position would do: leave a note for her dad, lock herself in the garage, turn on the multiple cars and wait to die of asphyxiation (yeah, SABRINA has a little bit of a dark streak here and there).  Thankfully, she is rescued by Linus Larrabee (Bogart), who provides her great kindness before moving along, back to his already very busy life.  In fact, of the two brothers, Linus appears to be the only one who gets any work done.

Anyway, two years studying at the Le Cordon Bleu in Paris turns Sabrina into a real sophisticate, indicated by her complete change in wardrobe by the time she returns home (SABRINA appears to officially be the first Hepburn film where her character’s arcs can be marked by tracking what outfit she’s wearing in any given scene).  By chance, David is driving by and obliviously takes her home.  By the time he realizes who he had in his car, he’s all of a sudden smitten.  But has Sabrina turned her eye to his brother?

If you haven’t picked up on it yet, SABRINA is built upon these three characters and their personalities bouncing off of each other.  Linus is serious, David is childish, and Sabrina finds things to love about both.  The film certainly feels like an adaptation of a play; it’s mostly dialogue and behavior-driven.  Some of the most interesting scenes in the movie actually don’t involve Sabrina at all.  It’s the two brothers going at it, as David’s newfound love for Sabrina threatens his arranged engagement with a woman with a wealthy father.  Linus takes this personally for a couple of reasons.  For one, it’s another example of David’s selfish whims putting in danger something Linus has meticulously put together for the good of the family business.  For second, maybe, just maybe, he’s falling in love with Sabrina himself.

Ironically, even though we’re in the middle of Audrey Hepburn Month, I want to focus on one of her co-stars in SABRINA, Humphrey Bogart.

Humphrey Bogart remains this eternal go-to reference when we think about Hollywood.  There was a time when every dad probably had an impression of him ready to go.  Kids in my generation probably knew about him thanks to reruns of old Looney Tunes cartoons (they were the only reason I knew who Garbo was too).  Even decades after his passing, Bogart is still synonymous with Old Hollywood, this bastion of a type of leading man that has long since passed.

Yet, I still think we underrate what he really provides to a film.

Of course, he’s the most famous “noir” actor of all time, known best for his gangster flicks, of which he did a lot.  He was so synonymous with this type of masculine presence that he was even referenced in Godard’s BREATHLESS; in that film, the main character idolizes Bogart, to the point that he dresses and acts like him in life.  

Underneath all the bravado, however, is some of the subtle vulnerability I’ve ever seen.  It’s not a secret that Bogart had a distinct pair of eyes; it’s probably the number one thing that gets accentuated in caricatures.  The reason those eyes stick with us is because they belie a very real well of sadness that color some of his most memorable moments.  Some of his best performances ever (IN A LONELY PLACE, CASABLANCA, THE HARDER THEY FALL) have this intense melancholy baked into them.  The contradiction between this sadness, and the face and voice he had that seemed tailor-made for hardboiled dialogue is kind of what made him a legend.

So, to see him paired up against a still very young Audrey Hepburn presents an interesting opportunity that I think SABRINA manages to take advantage of.

Bogart overcomes two things that are actively working against him here: first of all, there’s a major age cap between he and Hepburn to consider, something that should by all accounts give the audience the creeps.  Second, he’s more or less of cast against type (some might argue miscast entirely).  He’s not a gangster, nor is he precisely a lost soul.  In fact, he’s pretty straight-laced, all in all.  He’s simply all business, a man used to running the multiple arms of his family’s company, and having to pick up the slack being afforded to his layabout brother.

Yet, overcome all of this, he does.  You don’t really worry about the age gap because Bogart doesn’t come off as incredibly old, necessarily.  He just comes off as mature, a stark contrast to his William Holden counterpart.  Actually, this kind of takes care of the second problem, too.  Even though Bogart isn’t exactly the actor I would have thought of to fulfill a role like this, you’re able to let that go for the most part because his presence fits the story that SABRINA is trying to tell.

Because even though William Holden’s character is the charmer, the “handsome one” AND he should have one up on our hearts in retrospect because we know that, of course, Holden and Hepburn had an intense love affair in real life, you wind up rooting for Sabrina and Linus to get together in the end.  Because you know that he’s the kind of man Sabrina should have.  Someone she can unwind and help let loose, just a little bit.  And that innate sadness bubbling under the surface at all times for Bogart makes it so heart wrenching when he begins to put the wheels in motion to send Sabrina away, as much to protect his own heart as it is to protect the family business. 

Do I think Bogart is Audrey Hepburn’s greatest leading man?  No, not really (that title probably goes to Cary Grant in CHARADE).  But it works so much better than you might imagine because of that mix of vulnerability and maturity that only Bogart could really have provided.   

By the way, as mentioned above, Holden and Hepburn famously hit it off in real time during the filming of SABRINA.  As the story goes, both were married and Holden was ready to leave his wife and kids in order to be with her.  However, Hepburn desperately wanted children at the time and the revelation that Holden had undergone a vasectomy put an end to the whole thing.  

Much of this information, however, comes from a 2015 book by Edward Epstein, somewhat redundantly titled Audrey and Bill: A Romantic Biography of Audrey Hepburn and William Holden, one that has undergone both acclaim and some scrutiny.  Not having read the book, I can only go off the tidbits and segments that other news outlets have up and ran with.  It certainly sounds like a great story, and seems to pass the smell test as something that could have happened.  However, keep in mind that most information you’ll read about the two of them hooking up seems to source back to this one particular book.  

Before wrapping up, much credit should be given to Billy Wilder, another Hollywood storyteller who seemed to just crank out the classics year after year.  DOUBLE INDEMNITY, THE LOST WEEKEND, SUNSET BOULEVARD, ACE IN THE HOLE and STALAG 17 all preceded SABRINA, with THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, SOME LIKE IT HOT and THE APARTMENT still to come.  Wilder movies probably set the tone for what we in the modern age consider “Classic Hollywood”, comfortable telling all types of stories and handling all kinds of star players with aplomb.

Here, Wilder displays a lot of great humor, in ways both large and small.  As mentioned above, Sabrina attempts to commit suicide by asphyxiation, and it’s presented so lightly and casually that it manages to catch you offguard and you end up laughing out of the lack of expectation, a difficult needle to thread!  Also, as an example of a tiny beat that still makes me laugh, there’s a moment at the Cordon Bleu where the scene transition score is still playing, the camera fixated on a window sitting inside the kitchen.  As the track completes, the head chef pops up from the bottom of the screen in time with the final, jaunty note.  It’s silly, and certainly is destroyed by being described.

But dammit, it made me laugh.

And of course, there’s Audrey herself, her status as an acting and fashion icon growing before our eyes.  We can also see the beginnings of both of those worlds combining to ultimately create her legacy.  What people seem to remember most about Hepburn films are the clothes; it’s probably the enduring memory of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (you know…probably).  So it goes with SABRINA; a quick Google search of “sabrina 1954 outfits” provides you oodles of other articles detailing her various dresses and costumes.  

Of course, her performance is great, as you get more of that longing and desire that she was always so good at communicating through the screen.  She gets to play a character who is much less formal and regal than she was in ROMAN HOLIDAY, so it was striking to see how much that natural eloquence to her remained, even as she played someone who reads as significantly younger than Princess Ann.  It’s kind of hard to really give note or observations on Hepburn in this stage of her career because these types of movies just fit her like a glove.  What is there to say?

So, we know Audrey can act.  She can wear the hell out of a designer dress.  And she can hang with some of the most established actors in Hollywood history.  What else is there to prove?  

Do we think she can sing and dance, too?

Next week: FUNNY FACE