Sabrina Comparison -- 1954 Versus

Sabrina Comparison -- 1954 versus 1995

Billy Wilder's 1954 version of "Sabrina" is a conventional Hollywood comedic fairytale, about a poor chauffeur's daughter in love with her father's employer's rich son. The heir to the family fortune David Larrabee has been married three times, but still Sabrina Fairchild worships the ground David walks upon. He lives in a posh suburb of Long Island, and Sabrina loves watching him dance at fancy parties. The young girl, an adept tree climber, remains carefully hidden away while she watches him twirl around the ballroom. She is entranced by his image. Then, her father, deciding that his tomboyish daughter needs a bit more polish, sends her away to culinary school in France. There, she is educated in the ways of making a souffle, gains a new wardrobe and haircut and returns, beautiful in a way that turns the head of David (not that David has ever been immune to the charms of pretty girls). In true Old Hollywood spirit, putting romance before money, David decides to end his engagement to a wealthy heiress and marry Sabrina instead. Her dream has come true -- and the nightmare of Linus Larrabee, David's brother, has also come to pass.

In contrast to his brother, Linus is a workaholic who sees life only in terms of dollars and cents -- and common sense. This means that he stands contrary to the values of Classic Hollywood films, which put emotion before reason, and love before money, in the hearts of the conventionally 'good' characters. After all, the story makes clear that Sabrina does not love her knight in shining armor David for his money, she loves him for saving her from asphyxiating in a garage one day, after nearly choking on the carbon monoxide pouring from the exhaust pipes of some idling cars.

Linus knows that if David ends his engagement, the family business and finances will be damaged, as this will put a crucial merger for the Larrabee firm in jeopardy. However, with Hollywood logic, rather than merely persuade David of his folly, Linus tries to romance Sabrina. Then, Linus falls in love with the girl against his will. Love wins over money, but Sabrina realizes that the quiet, unassuming Linus is the better match, and Sabrina lives happily ever after the end of the film.

Sidney Pollack's 1995 remake updates the setting to focus on the two Larrabee brothers, rather than the crusty old father (instead the mother is brought into focus), and he sharpens the sense of class conflict by visually stressing the difference between the persons living 'above' and 'below' stairs in the home. However, much of the fairytale like plot remains unchanged, as does the film's valorization of love over wealth. True, its character portrayals and view of the emotional development of the genders are subtler. For example, David's rich fiancee is not merely an heiress. She is also a doctor, as well as a kind of living seal of the 20 million dollar merger t Linus fears will be endangered if David chooses to run off with someone else.

But Sabrina's initial rough exterior is still presented in terms of a kind of casual tomboyishness, in this case, Julia Ormond's bespeckled visage rather than Audrey Hepburn's ponytail. The young woman must put away childish, gender-ambiguous play and adopt a feminine norm, to show she is a 'real' woman, worthy of David's class. Contemporary norms in terms of how males and females are portrayed in the two versions, are perhaps more manifest in how the newer version seems to take a more damning view of David's love of fast women and fast cars and his frequently boorish behavior with the fair sex. But by virtue of replicating the plot, Linus' equally crass seduction of a vulnerable young woman to preserve a corporate merger is still viewed in a reasonably tolerant light.

Also, in terms of the characteristics of both versions of Linus, Linus remains a much older man, which raises the question of how much better his relationship with Sabrina will be, although the viewer may take relief in the fact that she has been saved a marital 'merger' with the self-centered and irresponsible David. In the newer version, Sabrina's intelligence and strength of personally are more forthrightly expressed in her behavior with both David and Linus, which shows how it is no longer acceptable to show a woman's transformation purely visually, or in terms of her cooking and fashion skills, as it was in 1954.