Sabrina - Billy Wilder

Seen for the first time in September 2012.

You really have to hand it to Billy Wilder. Did he ever make a movie anything less than great? This starts off kind of slow, and has some weaknesses due to the theatrical nature of its source material. But shit, I thought it was going to be one kind of cliched romance, but it turns into a different kind of cliched romance, but the clichedness does not matter because of the absolute mastery in the telling of the cliche. Audrey Hepburn is just stunning. Her beauty is painful to gaze upon at times.

Also a great performance by Bogart in what is a multifaceted role and which must have required much delicacy to effectively pull off all of the aspects and countenances. On the one hand, the man has to be a cold-blooded businessman ruthless and heartless in motivation, but he must also be able to pull off the misty-eyed love interest well enough to make the final sentimentality effective. We need to believe in both characters at the end. His character evolves, but does not transform. The movie would not work if we could only believe in him as one character but not the other.

Extraneously, William Holden seems a little old for his role. Not that Bogey doesn’t, but Bogey’s age is acknowledged by the movie. This’d be a good movie to stay in and watch with a girl on a rainy Saturday night. Grade A.