After last week’s post, reader rdfranciswriter commented:
So let’s do one last Remake Rumble for 2021, shall we?
The story of Sabrina Fairchild and the brothers who courted her originally flowed from the pen of playwright Samuel A. Taylor as Sabrina Fair: A Woman of the World that opened on Broadway in 1953 starring Margaret Sullavan (last seen in this series in The Shop Around the Corner) and Joseph Cotton (last seen here as Joan Fontaine’s lover in September Affair.)
The next year Billy Wilder set to write, produce, and direct a film version of the play and assembled a powerhouse cast—Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, and William Holden. The foursome would end their careers with 32 Oscar nominations and 9 wins among them, with each of the leads having a Best Acting Oscar on their shelf.
Sabrina tells the story of Sabrina Fairchild (Hepburn), a gawky chauffeur’s daughter who lives on the estate of the wealthy Larrabee family. She has forever had a schoolgirl crush on David Larrabee (Holden), the much older playboy who flits from woman to woman and barely knows Sabrina is alive.
But when she returns after two years in France all grown up, hair cut short and dressed like, well, Audrey Hepburn, David is instantly infatuated with her, not immediately realizing she’s a girl he’s known all his life. His fiancé forgotten, he invites Sabrina to one of the Larrabee parties and suddenly she’s Cinderella at the ball, on the inside instead of watching the festivities from her perch in a tree.
But this will not do.
David’s mother is dismayed at the idea of him parading a servant’s daughter in front of their high-class friends, but his older brother Linus (Bogart) is against the relationship for an entirely different reason. Linus is the one who does all the work in the family, running their massive empire, practically living in his office. He’s arranged David’s upcoming marriage to Elizabeth Tyson like an ancient king, a bargaining chip to foster a merger between her family’s company and his own.
Knowing David’s short attention span (and not suspecting Sabrina’s lifelong devotion to him), Linus sets on wooing Sabrina away from David and then tricking her into sailing back to Paris, believing that he will meet her on the boat.
But ruthless Linus is soon under Sabrina’s spell, and she begins to wonder if she’s loved the wrong brother all these years….
Sydney Pollack’s 1995 remake keeps the spirit of the original in-tact and makes some minor improvements. Sabrina (this time played by Julia Ormond) spends her time working for Vogue magazine, and this explains her fashion transformation better than the original, where she studies at a cooking school.
There is also a more pronounced physical change in Sabrina and it’s much more believable that David wouldn’t recognize her.
He also somewhat shrinks the age difference between his leads—Harrison Ford is twenty-three years older than Ormond, and looks younger than his years. Bogart was thirty years older than Hepburn, and looked even older, as his health had begun to suffer (he would be dead within three years of Sabrina’s release.)
The Larrabee corporation is updated to buying and selling networks and televisions, cutting edge technology for the 1990’s.
And Linus buys Sabrina a plane ticket to Paris rather than a cabin on an ocean liner.
But the broad strokes remain. We still get to see David the playboy in action, a lovesick girl grow into a sophisticated woman, and Linus’ gradual realization that there’s more to life than the next big deal. We also get to see David punch out his brother when he realizes just what Linus has been up to, and also see David finally grow up and do what’s best for his family’s company—and his brother.
As to the verdict?
Come on. This is the Golden Age of Hollywood blog. If I picked a 1995 remake over a film tailor-made for legend of legends Audrey Hepburn, with three Oscar winners in the lead roles and a multi-winner in the director’s chair, I’d lose my license to write here.
Want more? Click here for an index of all posts in the series, as well as source notes and suggested readings.
Yep, has to be the Hepburn version, no contest really.
The above is the correct answer, the Pollack version is a rare misfire. But….shock, horror, I’m not a great fan of either of them, this story never clicked with me at all.
Yes, I generally like my heroines to have a bit more grit and guile than poor Sabrina.
Why anyone would attempt to repaint a Rembrandt is above and beyond comprehension. The romance of the era when the film was shot matched the perfectly casted actors, the magnificent MGM’s home. The magnificent auto mobiles and the respect given to each individual despite their capacity in the film. A gem of a movie without peers.
Yes. Some movies can be remade. But I ‘ve come to believe that certain movies are untouchable and this is certainly one of them. Thanks for stopping by!
I like the 1995 version. There is more interaction with Sabrina and Linus.
I think your argument in part is fallacious about how the remake make some improvements for what you see you are plot holes or flaws. For example changing it so Sabrina goes to Paris to enter the fashion world isn’t needed – at the cooking school, she meets a Baron who mentors her. The first time they talk, he tells her how she needs to change the way she looks. She doesn’t need to enter the fashion industry to do that – she’s got someone with class and money who takes her to the opera and to high-brow balls. I think that would explain her transformation quite well!