For those of you with somewhat lengthy memories, you may recall that I proposed a write-off, so many months ago. It was called the Deja-View Write Off, in which contributors were supposed to watch two versions of the same film -- the original and a remake -- and review them. A few unfortunate things happened, however. First, only one person even bothered to officially contribute -- pmills1210 did his comparison of two different versions of The Sunshine Boys. Secondly, I was very lax in doing much of anything concerning my own write-off…. I barely made the effort to invite anyone, and, since it was the summer, when I’m generally a lot busier, I let things go by the wayside.

Now about four months have passed since I came up with the write-off idea. Since it’s clear that the write-off is a long-decayed carcass which will never be revived, I might as well cheat on this particular review. The fact is that I have completed the viewing portion of the assignment -- I did watch both versions of Sabrina. However, it was more than a month since I watched the original, and only a couple of days ago when I watched the remake. And since I have other things to catch up on, and since the write off is no longer a big priority, I might as well kill two birds with one stone and talk a bit about the new version and how it stacks up against the original………..

The 1995 version of Sabrina was directed by Sidney Pollack (Tootsie, Out of Africa), and stars Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond, and Greg Kinnear, and is a remake of a 1954 film by Billy Wilder, responsible for some great films such as Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, Some Like it Hot, and Stalag 17. Wilder’s version starred Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, and William Holden, and was a breezy romantic comedy involving a young chauffeur’s daughter (Hepburn) and her crazy love for playboy David Larabee (Holden), who would much rather pay attention to all the pretty ladies that he invites over to the parties that his rich family throws. However, once Sabrina goes to Paris, and returns a whole new woman, David soon becomes smitten with her, even as he is about to be married off to the daughter of a rich plastics tycoon. Bogart plays Holden’s brother, Linus, who is all work and no play, and who wants to ensure that David does marry the plastics tycoon’s daughter, to ensure that a merger of the two families’ companies takes place. To do this, he has to distract Sabrina by pretending to show some interest himself in her.

Right away, we can see that the Sabrina remake is missing four things. And they are Billy Wilder, Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, and William Holden. The three actors in the remake don’t match the originals. Julia Ormond does approximate a Hepburn appearance, and even speaks somewhat like her, but, still, it’s not the real deal. And Kinnear does project some of the easy phony charm of a spoiled rich young man who never had to be responsible for anything. But Harrison Ford is terrible! Ford, in playing a dour rich man, goes overboard with moroseness, practically mumbling and grumbling his words. Bogart never did that at all.

But certainly the biggest problem is that it’s missing Billy Wilder -- I mean that it’s missing almost everything that made the original fun. Billy Wilder’s movies were, for the most part, witty, cynical, and humorous -- even Sunset Boulevard and The Lost Weekend, two very serious movies of his, had many biting and funny bits in them. Sabrina was a much lighter work, although it still contained some classic bits of sour humour, most notably an early scene where Sabrina, distraught at David’s continued ignorance of her, decides to end it all by locking herself in the car garage and turning on the car -- since, of course, the Larabee’s are a rich family, their garage contains not one, but somewhere around ten cars, which means that she hops from car to car, turning each of them on, and the noise manages to shake the entire property and alert Linus to what’s going on the garage. Believe me, the scene is much funnier than it sounds (but you‘d never know from watching the remake, which omits this entire sequence). And the entire movie is filled with funny lines and equally funny scenes.

But the remake really screws everything up -- inexplicably, it takes everything seriously! What Pollack does is take a story that contained wit, charm, and amusing romance and change it into an attempt at a sappy romantic movie. Sappy romance has its place, but in this case, Pollack should have attempted to make an original picture instead of botching up a movie from one of the greats of Hollywood.

Right from the beginning, we see how different this new version is. The music on the soundtrack is quiet, slow, romantic, and many of the scenes play out in a leisurely pace, as we are meant to absorb the romantic atmosphere. The beautiful, extravagant property of the Larabees. Sabrina’s life-changing trip to Paris, complete with a French boyfriend and lots of photo shoots with snobby French models. The hushed tones and longing looks of people who find themselves in love. The melodramatic speeches by people who want to profess their undying love. The new version of Sabrina has all of these things, and yet it just didn’t work for me, because the new version feels like a crock. This isn’t what really happens; this is stuff out of a idealized fantasy.

There is very little to suggest that this new version isn’t anything more than a fantasy of glamorous people, doing things that glamorous people do, such as going to parties, going on life-finding trips to Paris, and falling hopelessly in love. Sure, Sabrina herself isn’t extremely rich, but she and her dad still live in the Larabee property, and are in their employ. Sabrina gets to go on a trip to Paris, which involves working as an assistant in model shoots , and getting some life lessons from both a French boyfriend and an older French woman. Everyone dresses well, and behaves respectably, or at least, they don’t behave in a vulgar fashion. This is the dream of many poor (financially and otherwise) day-dreamers, who want an escape, and, on that score, the superficial aspects of that dream are recreated quite well by the filmmakers.

In terms of romance, our three main characters are stricken with it, and it threatens to consume them. Sabrina has always pined for David, perhaps because he is a handsome, fun-loving sort, while David ends up falling for the new Sabrina, the one who changed, appearance-wise, at least, on that trip to Paris, because her new glamorous appearance reveals to his eyes the hopeless romantic soul within her that no other woman in his life could match up to. And Linus, wanting to fool Sabrina so his planned business deal can go through, ends up really falling for her as well, and it’s difficult for him, because he’s so used to being the stern businessman, with no soul -- yet in reality, Linus is lonely, and Sabrina’s life-affirming nature makes him realize that there is more to life than mergers and acquisitions.

In a sense, Billy Wilder’s version depicted all of these things as well. But, instead of trying to make a five-hankie weeper, Wilder made everything funny. It wasn’t in his nature to make a sappy, aching romance -- if Wilder wasn’t funny, he was biting and bitter, not melodramatic and teary-eyed. And in a romantic comedy, Wilder looked for any opportunity to get a laugh -- and usually got it. He made sport of Holden’s character, especially when he has a nasty injury resulting from unwittingly sitting down on a chair while two wine glasses were still in his back pockets. Bogart had tricked him to sit down and injure himself, so he’d be out of commission while Bogart attempts to pretend to fall for Hepburn . There’s even laughs in the sequences where Bogart attempts to charm her, as his idea of a romantic song during a quiet outing is “We’ve Got No Bananas Today” -- even more intriguing is that , instead of thinking the guy’s weird, Hepburn actually gets something out of his choice of music! And the brothers come to blows later on when each guy gets ticked off at the other’s meddling in his affairs -- Linus gets punched in the jaw first, then vice versa later on.

In Pollack’s vision, though, the laughs are gone, as are most of the things that received laughs in the original. Yes, here as well, Linus gets David to sit on those wine glasses. And , yes, Linus the stuffed shirt courts Sabrina for business purposes only, before realizing that he is really in love. And the brothers exchange fists in the face. But this movie moves so slowly, is so worked up with creating a languid atmosphere, that there is little time for laughs, and when Pollack does attempt comedy, nine times out of ten it fails. David sits on the wine glasses, and is holed up for a time, but instead of having him complain all the time about the pain in his behind (as William Holden did), he’s drugged up, and we get a dumb scene of him wearily saying silly stuff while drugged painkillers -- it’s supposed to be funny, but it isn’t.

Linus’s courting of Sabrina is also handled with little suspense, because almost right away we can see his heart melting for her. We get enough cues in the dialogue to tell us this. The original didn’t deal this hand until the right moment, when Bogart’s Linus finally admitted to himself that he really liked her --he is able to maintain his appearance of a stuffed shirt until it is almost too late. I will admit that this new version has a funny bit when Linus, attempting to show Sabrina that he’s not totally cold, points to an abandoned building in a city block he owns, and makes up a story about donating it to the town as a halfway house.

And the socks to the jaw are handled weirdly in the new version as well. In the original, it’s practically slapstick, and the second event, in particular, is basically a comic resolution of the plot. Here, however, I think it’s really meant to be painful. These people are really mad at each other, and can’t help but throw their fists around.

In essence, the major flaw of the new Sabrina is that it is too dreamy-eyed, romantic, serious, slow, and clunky. I suppose they made the movie this way because they wanted to get at the romantic essence of the plot, to make the pains of the heart mean as much a big deal to the viewers as it does to the characters. However, by doing that, the movie is drained of all realism. Yes, even though the original was played almost entirely for laughs, it was definitely far more believable -- the characters were allowed to be funny, witty, and yet they didn’t act or speak unlike real human beings. The reason it was funny is because to an outside observer, the crazy things people do for love is funny. Billy Wilder was the sort of guy who allowed comedy, and wit, in even his most serious of movies -- but, instead of ruining the movie, it made it more down-to-earth. For example, I definitely wouldn’t call his prisoner-of-war film Stalag 17 a comedy, although most of it is comedic -- but that’s what happens when you got a bunch of guys holed up in squalid surroundings; they’ve got to pass the time somehow. In Sabrina’s case, treating a love triangle between a chauffeur’s daughter and two brothers, a male-airhead/playboy, and an uptight, ruthless businessman, as comedic is a more apt depiction of human nature than treating it as a sappy soap opera.

I suppose that this review isn’t a fair one. Maybe I should have reviewed the new Sabrina on its merits alone. True, it does successfully present a visually romantic appearance. And, perhaps if the old Sabrina did not exist, I would say that Pollack’s film was a decent enough romantic drama, a quality tear-jerker. But the old version does exist, created by one of the great filmmakers of Hollywood, and this recent version, in taking away what made Wilder’s movie great, only becomes a pale shadow of its predecessor.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above