Totally agree on Bogart. I liked the movie but couldn’t believe she would fall for a not so handsome man who was old before his time. Very distracting.
Thank you! I rewatched this recently after many years, and two things struck me that I hadn't sussed before. First, that Sabrina was sent to "cooking school" (apparently a rigorous French culinary acadamy where sauces take 2 months of study) and other than pretending to make an omelette with crackers in Linus's office, there's not even a hint that she has marketable skills, or should or will be seeking a job. Of course that's just a plot device to give her a Parisian glow-up; in 1954, snagging a man was more a woman's job than doing paid work, even kitchen-based work. (I'll have to watch the 1995 version uuuugggghhh to see if they updated that trope.) Then there's marriage. Neither David - whose fiancee is planning his fifth(?) Bezosian wedding extravaganza - nor Linus even hints at marrying Sabrina. When Linus arranges for her to go back to Paris but (unbeknownst to her) without him, David puts a gossip item in the newspaper about Linus Larrabee and Sabrina "taking adjacent deck chairs" on the steamer to Paris, to push Linus into action. David has arranged a police escort to the docks and a tugboat to take Linus to the departing ship, but not an officiant to marry them, or even a marriage license. (The elaborate discussion of the two cabins Linus paid for though he didn't intend to go is for the censors; we know there's an unlocked door between them, wink-wink.) I also have a few things to say about the rapaciousness of the Larrabee family and the ungodly mid-century celebration of extractive wealth, but I'll leave that for another time.
oh, those are good points! I do think you are supposed to think that Linus and Sabrina marry, but also seems likely Wilder didn’t state it intentionally.
There’s definitely an essay I could have (and maybe should have) written about the way patriarchal capitalism is both fetishized and humanized in these kinds of romance stories (definitely including Pretty Woman and Fifty Shades of Grey.) It’s somewhat complicated in that there’s generally an acknowledgement that the patriarchal capitalists are pretty awful, but the solution to that is not to stay away from them, but rather to heal them through love, creating a fantasy of a nicer capitalism and of a cinderella story simultaneously.
I hadn't thought of Sabrina being in that tradition of patriarchal capitalism / Cinderella romance, but yes, it's a good example. There may also be a thread to pull about the redemptive power of the young, low-status woman vs the women who inhabit the Larrabees' world (4 wives couldn't tame David, but Sabrina's influence did). Thanks again for the deep dive into the movie, and the discussion!
I never got the appeal of this movie even though it was my mother's inspiration for my name. And I always thought the age discrepancy between Hepburn and Holden and Hepburn and Bogart to be icky.
Hepburn kept getting paired with much older men by Wyler and then Donan. With Cooper in Love in the Afternoon and Charade with Cary Grant, who had earlier turned down Roman Holiday as being too old. Peck who took the role was older but by not as much.
This is neither the first nor the last time in Hollywood history that a signficant age gap existed between the lead actors, but it plays a role in the suspension of disbelief here.
Totally agree on Bogart. I liked the movie but couldn’t believe she would fall for a not so handsome man who was old before his time. Very distracting.
Thank you! I rewatched this recently after many years, and two things struck me that I hadn't sussed before. First, that Sabrina was sent to "cooking school" (apparently a rigorous French culinary acadamy where sauces take 2 months of study) and other than pretending to make an omelette with crackers in Linus's office, there's not even a hint that she has marketable skills, or should or will be seeking a job. Of course that's just a plot device to give her a Parisian glow-up; in 1954, snagging a man was more a woman's job than doing paid work, even kitchen-based work. (I'll have to watch the 1995 version uuuugggghhh to see if they updated that trope.) Then there's marriage. Neither David - whose fiancee is planning his fifth(?) Bezosian wedding extravaganza - nor Linus even hints at marrying Sabrina. When Linus arranges for her to go back to Paris but (unbeknownst to her) without him, David puts a gossip item in the newspaper about Linus Larrabee and Sabrina "taking adjacent deck chairs" on the steamer to Paris, to push Linus into action. David has arranged a police escort to the docks and a tugboat to take Linus to the departing ship, but not an officiant to marry them, or even a marriage license. (The elaborate discussion of the two cabins Linus paid for though he didn't intend to go is for the censors; we know there's an unlocked door between them, wink-wink.) I also have a few things to say about the rapaciousness of the Larrabee family and the ungodly mid-century celebration of extractive wealth, but I'll leave that for another time.
oh, those are good points! I do think you are supposed to think that Linus and Sabrina marry, but also seems likely Wilder didn’t state it intentionally.
There’s definitely an essay I could have (and maybe should have) written about the way patriarchal capitalism is both fetishized and humanized in these kinds of romance stories (definitely including Pretty Woman and Fifty Shades of Grey.) It’s somewhat complicated in that there’s generally an acknowledgement that the patriarchal capitalists are pretty awful, but the solution to that is not to stay away from them, but rather to heal them through love, creating a fantasy of a nicer capitalism and of a cinderella story simultaneously.
I hadn't thought of Sabrina being in that tradition of patriarchal capitalism / Cinderella romance, but yes, it's a good example. There may also be a thread to pull about the redemptive power of the young, low-status woman vs the women who inhabit the Larrabees' world (4 wives couldn't tame David, but Sabrina's influence did). Thanks again for the deep dive into the movie, and the discussion!
I never got the appeal of this movie even though it was my mother's inspiration for my name. And I always thought the age discrepancy between Hepburn and Holden and Hepburn and Bogart to be icky.
Hepburn kept getting paired with much older men by Wyler and then Donan. With Cooper in Love in the Afternoon and Charade with Cary Grant, who had earlier turned down Roman Holiday as being too old. Peck who took the role was older but by not as much.
And then there's Funny Face with Fred Astaire.
I must watch Sabrina this weekend.
This is neither the first nor the last time in Hollywood history that a signficant age gap existed between the lead actors, but it plays a role in the suspension of disbelief here.