Sabrina (1954)

Light romantic comedy directed by Billy Wilder. 

Audrey Hepburn stars in the title role. She thinks she’s in love with the wealthy Long Island next-door neighbour David (William Holden) but really she’s falling in love with his brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart). 

There are some nice moments but it’s not really funny enough to justify the slightly contorted plot. Hepburn and Bogart are both charismatic and charming, but you wish they had been given sharper, wittier lines to deliver. 

The film was remade in 1995 with Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond and Greg Kinnear.

My Fair Lady (1964)

The “classic” musical turns out to be a huge disappointment. 

A conceited professor of phonetics (Rex Harrison) tasks himself with taking a working-class girl named Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) and educating her sufficiently so that she can pose as a member of high society. 

Hepburn and Harrison have plenty of charisma and charm, but pretty much everything else falls flat. Elisa’s dustman father (Stanley Holloway) is an embarrassing disaster. The “chorus” scenes don’t really work, either, and the rather abusive treatment of Elisa is played for laughs in a way that you can’t imagine happening in a modern film. In narrative terms, the two transformative moments – Elisa learning to enunciate and the pair realising they are in love – are both completely thrown away, buried in pointless filler set pieces and side plots that drag out the running time. 

I liked Harrison’s talk-sing delivery of his song lyrics. The style almost approaches rap. But beyond a couple of memorable songs, all you’re left with is two talented actors struggling to rise above a drab and tiresome mess.

Roman Holiday (1953)

Hugely charming romantic comedy.

Audrey Hepburn plays a princess from an unnamed country, who has a stifling life of rigid routine and protocol. While on a royal visit to Rome, she escapes her palace security in search of adventure. She meets an American journalist (Gregory Peck), who aims to write up the story and exploit it for money. But inevitably the pair fall in love. 

It’s very funny in places but it’s also tender and touching. Initially light and frothy, it acquires real emotional depth in its later stages – especially since you realise it can’t offer a simplistic happy ending.