Sabrina Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Sabrina Blu-ray Movie Review

Clothes Make the Lady

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 6, 2014

Near the end of his life, director Billy Wilder attended a private screening of Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, based on his experience as a music critic for Rolling Stone magazine. The two filmmakers had become friends during the writing of Crowe's book, Conversations with Billy Wilder. According to Crowe's account, the elderly Wilder spent much of the movie holding his hands over his ears, protesting the volume of the rock soundtrack. Then came the poignant moment where Kate Hudson's groupie, Penny Lane, discovers that the guitarist she loves has traded her to another band for fifty bucks and a case of beer. She pauses for a moment to take in the news, then asks: "What kind of beer?" And Wilder began to laugh. Crowe had punctured the scene's sentimental potential with the kind of acid wit that was Wilder's specialty.

Sabrina, the 1954 comic soufflé that made Audrey Hepburn a fashion icon, is full of such moments, including the cooking classes in which Hepburn's Sabrina has to learn the proper way to crack an egg. Adapting a stage play that couldn't even hold star William Holden's interest past intermission, Wilder and co-screenwriter Ernest Lehman (Sweet Smell of Success) spiked a high-society Cinderella story with enough physical comedy and social satire to dry out any tears the audience might be tempted to shed. Fortune smiled on the production when Cary Grant, originally cast as Holden's disapproving older brother, dropped out shortly before shooting began. Lured by the prospect of working with Wilder, Humphrey Bogart stepped in, and the anti-chemistry between Bogart and Holden (who didn't get along during the production) turned out to be ideal. If Grant had played the part, everyone would have suspected a romantic soul in hiding. Bogart's astringent performance kept everyone guessing, and it still works today, because Bogart's face is that of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Rick Blaine, Fred Dobbs, Harry Morgan and every gangster that Bogart had played in a long career filled with cynics and tough guys.

"Once upon a time", begins the voiceover narration, thereby setting the fairytale tone. The speaker is Sabrina Fairchild (Hepburn), daughter of Thomas Fairchild (John Williams, Dial M for Murder), chauffeur to the Larrabees of Manhattan and Long Island. The Larrabees are a fabulously wealthy family, members of the American industrial aristocracy in the era when manufacturing was still primarily a domestic affair. Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee (Walter Hampden and Nella Walker) remain at the family's Glen Cove, Long Island estate, hosting social affairs, while the business is now the responsibility of their elder son, Linus (Bogart), who is driven into the city every morning by Fairchild. The younger son, David (Holden), is devil-may-care playboy, thrice married and divorced, and always romancing another pretty face. Linus' dictation of a memo to David reminding him of the location of his office is one of many memorable moments.

Sabrina has grown up on the estate peeping in at the windows on the Larrabees' storybook life. Her father, a proper Englishman who arrived with the family Rolls Royce, tells her to remember her station, but Sabrina has developed a desperate crush on David Larrabee. In the hope that she'll find other interests in life, Mr. Fairchild arranges for Sabrina to spend two years at cooking school in Paris. There the young girl blossoms, especially after she has the good fortune to meet the elderly Baron St. Fontanel (the great French actor Marcel Dalio, who appeared in The Rules of the Game and Casablanca, among many others). Seeing great potential in the shy Sabrina, the Baron undertakes to act as a one-man finishing school. When she returns to Glen Cove, swathed in haute couture, hardly anyone recognizes her—especially not David Larrabee, who is literally swept off his feet.

David's infatuation with Sabrina comes at an inconvenient time for Linus, who, with the cold eye of a feudal lord, has arranged for David to marry Elizabeth Tyson (Martha Hyer), daughter of another industrialist with whose company Linus is seeking to establish a valuable alliance. The deal will move Larrabee Industries into the growing market for a new plastic whose strength and flexibility become a running visual gag. When David secretly invites Sabrina to his own engagement party, and she arrives in a stunning gown that has every man at the party turning in her direction, Linus swings into action to separate her from David. No strategy is too underhanded.

The challenge for Linus, however, is that separating Sabrina from David involves spending time with her himself, and that's not an activity with which he has much experience. Bogart's portrayal of Linus' obvious unease as he tries to imitate his younger brother's savoir-faire, while reassuring Sabrina that "it's all in the family", is ingeniously subtle. Eventually Linus has to open up about himself, just to keep the conversations going, and Sabrina can't help but find him intriguing. She has, after all, known him for most of her life.

With Cinderella now suffering from a surfeit of princes, and fathers on both sides clucking over the impropriety of it all, only a sure hand could keep Sabrina light and fluffy, but Wilder was a master of tone. Among other things, he knew how to make the most of his supporting cast to supply unexpected moments of levity, much like Penny Lane's beer question in Almost Famous. Walter Hampden's Mr. Larrabee is a terrific resource, with his extreme attempts to conceal his continued smoking from his wife and his protracted efforts to extract the last olive from a jar for a martini. Even in the film's final frames, when other directors would be focusing on a romantic finish, Wilder's attention is fixed on paying off a joke about an umbrella that he set up much earlier in the film. Like Penny Lane's query, it's a trivial point that pops out of left field and somehow feels right.

Sabrina Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Charles Lang's (Some Like It Hot) black-and-white cinematography for Sabrina was among the film's six Oscar nominations. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, mastered from a Paramount transfer, provides a lustrous reproduction of Lang's richly textured tableaux, most of which were created on soundstages and backlots, though a few locations were used for exteriors. When the film was released, most of the attention focused on Hepburn's Givenchy-designed wardrobe, which created a new look in women's fashion. Present day viewers will be more interested in the detailed renderings of the Larrabee mansion, with its cavernous interiors, expansive indoor tennis court (a favorite place for David to bring his conquests) and the massive garage over which Sabrina lives with her father. Linus's enormous office, which is big enough to contain a boardroom table, is also a key set. The minutia of these locales is finely rendered in shades of black and gray on Warner's Blu-ray, which is another excellent example of how effectively B&W photography can paint a lively and compelling picture.

Sharpness is generally good for material of this vintage, except for occasional process shots, and video noise is generally absent. The film's grain pattern appears to be natural and undisturbed by either high frequency filtering or artificial sharpening. The average bitrate of 29.94 Mbps is unusually high for Warner, and one can only hope that it signals a trend away from the tight compression that the studio has favored in the past. Certainly Sabrina is not marred by artifacts.

Sabrina Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sabrina's original mono soundtrack is presented as lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. It's an effective mix, with certain key sound effects (e.g., breaking glass or the crack of an egg shell) amplified for appropriate effect. Otherwise, dialogue has priority. The dynamic range is about what one would expect for a film of the period, but fidelity is good throughout. The score consists primarily of songs heard either as source music or as adapted by Friedrich Hollaender for orchestra. They include "La Vie en Rose" and "Isn't It Romantic?" (Hollaender is also credited for composing "additional music".)

Sabrina Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Paramount's 2001 DVD of Sabrina had only the "Documentary" listed below. In 2009, Paramount released a two-disc "Centennial Collection", from which the Blu-ray's extras have been ported (omitting only "Paramount in the '50s: Retrospective Featurette").

• Audrey Hepburn: Fashion Icon (1080i; 1.78:1; 17:35): Various fashion designers and historians discuss the iconic wardrobe created for Audrey Hepburn's post-Paris transformation, for which costume designer Edith Head won one of her eight Oscars, although the designs came from rising French couturier, Givenchy (a point of contention in the years following the film).



• Sabrina's World (1080i; 1.78:1; 11:28): A historical overview of the North Shore of Long Island during the first half of the 20th Century, when the wealthy elite of America built fabulous mansions on massive estates.



• Supporting Sabrina (1080i; 1.78:1; 16:35): A portrait of some of Sabrina's most memorable supporting cast, including John Williams (Sabrina's father), Ellen Corby (Linus' secretary), Nancy Kulp (the Larrabees' maid), Marcel Dalio (the Baron), Walter Hampden (Mr. Larrabee), Francis X. Bushman (Mr. Tyson) and Martha Hyer (Elizabeth Tyson).



• William Holden: The Paramount Years (1080i; 1.78:1; 29:52): This informative documentary reviews Holden's career from his early days as a contract player at Paramount. Note, however, that its focus on his films for Paramount results in the omission of major films for other studios such as The Wild Bunch and Network.



• Sabrina Documentary (480i; 1.33:1; 11:46): This overview of the film's production is a somewhat sanitized version with Paramount producer A.C. Lyles supplying "official" memories. It's not inaccurate, just tame and incomplete.



• Behind the Gates: Cameras (1080i; 1.78:1; 5:11): A brief tour of the Paramount camera department, which has models of some of the oldest cameras used in cinema.

Sabrina Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Hepburn had already won an Oscar for Roman Holiday, which was her first American feature, but she was still a relatively new face in Sabrina. When Givenchy was told that he would be outfitting a leading lady named "Hepburn", he assumed it was Katharine. Sabrina cemented her reputation as a star and a motion picture legend. Bogart and Holden, of course, were already major names, and this glittery trio powered the film to success on its initial release. Thanks to its director's solid craftsmanship, the film still holds up sixty years later. Highly recommended.