Sabrina

A businessman (Humphrey Bogart) becomes alarmed when his younger brother’s (William Holden) romance with the chauffeur’s daughter (Audrey Hepburn) threatens a multi-million dollar deal.

Sabrina is an easy romantic comedy that works thanks to a great cast and director Billy Wilder’s uncanny ability to balance both comedy and drama.

Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden all work well together, with chemistry to spare, be it the attraction between Hepburn and Holden, the sibling rivalry between Holden and Bogart, or even the tender romance between Hepburn and Bogart, it all works. This is all the more impressive considering Bogart and Holden reportedly didn’t get along, and that Bogart had wanted his wife, Lauren Bacall for Hepburn’s role. Still, whatever tension existed off-set, none of it’s present onscreen.

The supporting cast shines as well, particularly John Williams and Walter Hampden who turn in some of the funniest scenes as Hepburn’s character’s father, and the Larrabee patriarch respectively.

What ultimately makes Sabrina work though, is Billy Wilder. His deft handling of the story’s dramatic and comedic elements is such that you’d believe anyone could do it, but when you think about Sabrina’s story, a girl driven to suicide because of an unrequited teenage crush on a rich playboy, only to later fall for a man thirty years her senior, you realize what a tightrope Wilder walked. Yet he makes it look so easy.