Friday, September 29, 2006

Sabrina

1954. The young daughter of the chauffeur falls in love with the two very rich brothers who employ her father. Her redeeming features: she speaks excellent french, she's not after their money and she doesn't go for both of them at once (well, her affections overlap a little, but she makes up her mind in a couple of days).

After such agonising indecision Sabrina stays with the older brother, Linus, who is some 25 to 30 years older than her and a workaholic. Sabrina is played by Audrey Hepburn and Linus by Humphrey Bogart, who really was 25 to 30 years older than Hepburn, but an alcoholic instead of a workaholic.

To avoid the bad taste of showing such a mismatched pair kissing, their mouths keep a minimum distance of 5 cm throughout the film, which causes an effect of creepiness that was later to be perfectly imitated by Sophia Coppola in "Lost in translation".

In my opinion, Sabrina should have stuck with her original choice. David was only some 15 years older than her, and handsomer. Ok, so he was a bit of a womanizer, and in one scene we learn he'd kissed her on the mouth when she was 9 and he was teaching her to play tennis, but nobody is perfect...

Dear old Hollywood!!!

1 comment:

sattva said...

I've seen this movie! Oh Mariano, thank you so much for reminding me what a pleasant thing is to recollect the pieces of the past...

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