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Scrawny little Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn), the daughter of the chauffeur to the wealthy Larrabee family, is hopelessly infatuated with playboy David Larrabee (William Holden). When her father sends her to a culinary school in Paris, Sabrina returns two years later, transformed into an elegant, sophisticated woman. Although bethrothed to sugar cane heiress Elizabeth Tyson (Martha Hyer), David is attracted to Sabrina. However, David's brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) fears that David's attraction to Sabrina will endanger the corporate merger between the Tyson and Larabee businesses and sets out to distract Sabrina.

The movie Sabrina is based on a play, Sabrina Fair, a Woman of the World by American playwright Samuel A. Taylor (1912-2000). Taylor, along with director Billy Wilder and screenwriter Ernest Lehman, adapted the play, which opened on Broadway in 1953 and ran for 318 performances, for the movie. A remake, Sabrina (1995), was released in 1995.

When Linus is getting dressed to go boating with Sabrina, he tells his father how inconvenient it is to be spending the day boating with a "girl of 22". Hepburn was about 25 when Sabrina was filmed. Bogart was 55.

David drives a 1953 Nash Healey Spider. For more information about the history of this roadster, which was only produced between 1951 and 1954, see here and here.

La Vie en Rose (Life in Pink) was made popular by French chanteuse, Édith Piaf, who wrote the lyrics to go with the melody by Louis Gugliemi. The song is so closely bound to Piaf, known affectionately as "the little sparrow", that it became her signature song and was used for the English title of her 2007 biographical film La Vie En Rose (2007) that won Marion Cotillard an Academy Award. For those who don't have an ear for French, the part being sung by Sabrina includes the following:

Quand il me prend dans ses bras Il me parle tout bas, Je vois la vie en rose. Il me dit des mots d'amour, Des mots de tous les jours, Et ça me fait quelque chose. Il est entré dans mon coeur Une part de bonheur Dont je connais la cause.

When Sabrina learns that Linus was going to send her to Paris, not take her, she decides to make the trip alone, if only to uncomplicate the situation with the Larrabees. The next morning, Linus cancels the Larrabee-Tyson merger, as well as David's marriage to Elizabeth, and transfers his boat ticket into David's name so that David can go off with Sabrina. Later, as Linus calls the board meeting to order, the Liberté can be seen outside the window, heading out to sea. Just when Linus announces that the merger is off because David has gone to Paris with Sabrina, David walks in the door. He has decided to marry Elizabeth and go ahead with the merger, having realized by Sabrina's kiss the night before that she was in love with Linus. Just as Linus leaked the news of his "engagement" to Elizabeth, David has linked the news to the society page that Linus and Sabrina are traveling to Paris together. David tosses an umbrella and hat to Linus and informs him that there is a tugboat waiting to take him to the Liberté, if he chooses to go. In the final scene, Linus arranges to have the boat steward send his hat to Sabrina, who is languishing on a deck chair. As Sabrina tries to figure out what is going on, Linus sneaks up behind her. Sabrina turns around, and they fly into each others' arms.