12 mini-reviews for the short attention span, taken from dark corners of stevenl's video vault:

12 mini-reviews for the short attention span, taken from dark corners of stevenl's video vault:

12 mini-reviews for the short attention span, taken from dark corners of stevenl's video vault:

Sabrina / directed by Billy Wilder (1954, VHS). Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, Francis X. Bushman, Harvey B. Dunn (uncredited), Nancy Kulp (uncredited). Call this one the Ugly Duckling story, or Cinderella, or the Tortoise and Hare. Sabrina (Hepburn) is the daughter of the Larabee family chauffeur. David Larabee (Holden) is the rapidly-approaching-middle-age playboy younger Larabee brother, Linus (Bogart) is the too-old-for-this-role workaholic older brother. Sabrina is in love with the oblivious David, she travels to France and the duck returns as a swan. Only then does David falls in love with her, and Linus is sent in to fix the situation. There is a lot in this film about social and economic class, the dual yet unequal worlds of servants and the served. As Sabrina's chauffeur father points out, "Democracy can be a wickedly unfair thing, Sabrina. Nobody poor was ever called democratic for marrying somebody rich." Watching the effervescent Hepburn slowly wake up the soul of the stick-in-the-mud Bogart is really at the core of the story. Apparently, in reality, Bogart and Holden hated each other, and when asked how he liked working with Hepburn, Bogart said, "It's ok, if you don't mind to make 20 takes." There is a great cooking school scene on how to crack an egg. Bogart's bowtie is not too distracting, since it sort of fits his character.

12 mini-reviews for the short attention span, taken from dark corners of stevenl's video vault: