You Can’t Bogart Love

A Comparative Approach to Sabrina (1995)

Keen readers will notice that I didn’t post a review last week. This is for several reasons that emerged as follows:

1. I didn’t get an interview for a job I desperately wanted. I’ve applied to over 75 jobs in the last year, and I try not to want them because 90% of the time I don’t hear anything back at all, and it really sucks to be ghosted by the ones you want. But I couldn’t help this one – it was a dream job, the only kind of labor I dream of: helping young people develop critical thinking skills through cultural interpretation with equal emphasis on pastoral development. And I was real sad about it.
2. I watched Sabrina (1995) because Ben suggested we watch a favorite of mine, and I really love the original Sabrina (1954) and enjoy the remake and I was feeling 90s, so we watched the remake. And during it I was like “why didn’t we just watch the original that I love so much more?” Because the remake is fun, it’s interesting, we will get to it after this prelude, but the original is just so much better and I played myself and didn’t know what I wanted to write about yet.
3. I talked about the job search in trauma therapy Friday morning, and that made me even sadder because pep talks can only go so far when your entire sector has been in the flamethrower’s direct focus for a year, fully engulfing it in the fire that had been gradually building since the 70s.
4. I then got rare word that I was also passed over for a job I actively did not want, which normally would be a sigh and move on because I didn’t want it but I do need a job, but that all compounded, and I was like “bruh, plz.”
5. I went to my regular volunteering shift at my local food pantry on Saturday morning and felt re-energized. I was going to keep writing and doing the thing I love that I think is a genuinely good thing to be doing right now (promoting media literacy and critical analytical skills through fun film reviews). And then I got home, and I immediately saw the news from Minneapolis, and I was shattered again.
6. Then I was like “fuck it, let’s try to get back to early/mid-week posts.”

I share all this because I am sure that you can relate. I am 100% positive that there is something in your immediate life that, in a better world, could simply be better but, in our world, is being compounded on all sides by crushing sadness and despair and loneliness and anger and a desperate hopelessness that overwhelms the senses sometimes if even for a split second. And I am sharing this so you know that you are not alone in feeling those things, and you are not alone in begrudgingly doing the things you love because you know they’re good for you or for others even when you’re just not fucking feeling it.

If you’re doing your little workouts and cursing the whole time, I’m proud of you. If you’re eating vegetables when all you want to do is drown your emotions in a vat of chocolate frosting, I see you and I’m proud of you. If you’re forcing yourself to go to work and do your thing when all you want to do is cry and feed the hateful little gremlin in your mind by doomscrolling, sweetheart, you are incredible. For everyone spitefully going about life in extraordinary times, I am so deeply proud of you. I love the many Brits in my life, but I’m not about that stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on shite. Sometimes you need to bitch and complain and yell at your representatives and carry on anyway, and eventually you will find your way back to joy if even just to spite the hateful little gremlins in your mind and in our streets.

So, Sabrina. Let’s do that now.

Sabrina (1995) – Comparative

Again, I love both versions, and because I need this right now, I’ve foregone the Review Roulette wheel and decided on a Comparative approach between them. So, ostensibly we’re doing the remake, but more so looking at how the story was changed from the original film. Both are based on a play but the play is quite different from the films, so we’re focusing on the film adaptations.

So, both Sabrinas are about a woman named Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn; Julia Ormond), the completely overlooked daughter of the chauffeur of an insanely wealthy family on Long Island, the Larrabees. Sabrina has a lifelong crush on the younger Larrabee, David (William Holden; Greg Kinnear), and a lifelong fear of the older, Linus (Humphrey Bogart; Harrison Ford). Sabrina’s father (John WIlliams; John Wood) arranges for her to go to Paris (in 1954 she attends the Le Cordon Bleu culinary institute for two years; in 1995 she works as a fashion intern for Vogue for one year) to get away from her obsession with David, and she returns a sophisticated, glamorous woman, not easily overlooked any longer.

Meanwhile, David has gotten engaged to a woman who is the daughter of another tycoon. This is where it gets good. Linus sees their marriage as a business transaction to merge the companies and profit substantially, but David, a seemingly immature playboy, loses interest in his fiancee when Sabrina returns all hot and French. So Linus kind of manipulates David into consequences of his own actions (a literal ass injury from being an ass), and here’s where the films really diverge. 

In 1954, Linus orchestrates a whole plan to keep David incapacitated while keeping Sabrina interested in him. He woos her on David’s behalf, saying “don’t worry, David wanted me to show you the time of your life until he’s better and you two can escape his fiancee and live out your happily ever after in Paris together,” but Linus accidentally falls in love with her.

In 1995, Linus orchestrates a whole plan to keep David incapacitated but seduces Sabrina himself, and is ultimately goaded into leaving his life behind to live happily ever after with her in Paris.

In both films, Linus is intense and business-focused. He’s always thinking about the company, making strategic moves for the company, keeping his cards close to his chest. And it just plays so much better in the original.

I had watched each of these for the first time a few years ago fairly close together, like within a few weeks. So I think I still had the allure of Humphrey Bogart’s Linus in mind when watching the remake, and remembered them both as enjoyable. But, I’m sorry to say, Harrison Ford’s involvement was a bad call in this film.

I think this film works less well with Linus seducing Sabrina for himself. Ford plays the role very flatly, and I think he was going for a Bogart impression, which, fair enough, totally get that. But I think it was a mistake because you’re either Humphrey Bogart with the double-cross of accidentally falling in love, or you’re Harrison Ford seducing a woman. You can’t be doing a monotone Bogart impression when you’re Harrison Ford.

I don’t know if this is making sense, but the chemistry is off in the remake. In the original, the chemistry of the trio is superb. You have Humphrey Bogart, one of the most captivating performers in Hollywood history, playing this man who is always scheming. Monotone works because you never know what he’s thinking or doing or how many levels down you are on his masterplan of manipulation, only to find out at the end that he played himself. You have Audrey Hepburn, and the only thing that doesn’t work there is that anyone could possibly ever overlook her for even a second. She radiates sophistication, joy, intrepidness, and intrigue. And you have William Holden, a handsome, witty, comedic, capable actor, who really is well matched by Greg Kinnear in this role specifically, I must say. Their chemistry works brilliantly and the actors’ personal attributes were perfectly cast for the roles as written.

In the remake, they have to rewrite it because however popular Julia Ormond was in 1995, and she was, Julia Ormond is not Audrey Hepburn. They make Ormond’s Sabrina have a whole She’s All That, Princess Diaries makeover from frizzy hair, boho dresses, and glasses to cunty 90s pixie curls and pant suits. And I think that misses the point of Sabrina’s glow-up from the original. It’s not a make-over, it’s enhancing what was already there with confidence and grace that Sabrina gained from living a life for herself, exploring who she wanted to be, and growing internally. It’s like a mental health glow-up rather than a make-up and hair cut glow-up, and I think that’s really important. It is in the remake, but I think it’s undercut a bit by the physical transformation. (I’ve talked myself even more into Hepburn as Sabrina since the last paragraph).

And because Ormond is not Hepburn, we have the problem of Linus. It’s 1995. Harrison Ford is physically incapable of not being the love interest from the start. And that’s fine, great even, so long as he plays a Harrison Ford character and not Humphrey Bogart. So they changed the story to have Harrison Ford taking Sabrina on dates for himself, convinced he can make her fall in love with him in a matter of days, even though we are told that he has never had time for romance and no interest in wooing. If he were Harrison Ford, oozing charisma and flashing that debonair rascally smile, that would be fully believable. But he’s not. He’s doing his best Bogart by flattening his tone and mannerisms, taking heavy silent sighs before words that, when Bogart spoke them, had layers of meaning, but pale in comparison in Ford’s imitation.

The chemistry is just off. The balance of star power in the leads and individual personality meeting the script is off.

I want to be clear that I’m not panning the 1995 version. I really love it and I think they do very interesting things with it. For instance, the company is headed by their mother (Nancy Marchand) as opposed to their father in the 1954 version (Walter Hampden). I think this is a great choice because of how they adapted the story with Linus setting up Sabrina for betrayal by pretending to be in love with her himself. Marchand’s revelation of who her son turned out to be is powerfully written on her face, and it’s really an excellent touch. The company is also updated to be a billion dollar fiber optics company looking to merge with a tech hardware company. For 1995, these updates were really important and added to the perception of Linus as a smart, shrewd businessman who’s ten steps ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, I think they abandon his prowess by not letting Harrison Ford shine as the star he is and was.

Anyway, they’re both entertaining, delightful films, and if you haven’t seen the original, I would recommend it for some sweet escapism (but with the caveat of a content warning for an attempt on one’s life at the start of the film).

Wishing you all a bit of peace and joy and love and goodness in whatever ways you want and need right now. I’m proud of you, and I hope you continue to carry on.