How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Sabrina.
Quote #1
SABRINA: [voiceover] Once upon a time, on the north shore of Long Island, some thirty miles from New York, there lived a small girl on a large estate. The estate was very large indeed, and had many servants.
The opening "Once upon a time" voiceover tells you that the film is a fairy tale, in which magical things happen, dreams come true, and princes whisk you off to marry you willy-nilly. It also is a kind of fake out though, because it suggests dreams come true. And Sabrina's don't—or not exactly.
Quote #2
SABRINA: [writing to her father] I have learned how to live, how to be in the world and of the world, and not just to stand aside and watch. And I will never, never again run away from life. Or from love, either.
You might think that being a dreamer means being flighty and separated from the world. But Sabrina seems to be saying that she's going to make her dreams come true by going out into the world and getting them. As with Linus, being a dreamer makes you ruthless.
Quote #3
DAVID: It's all beginning to make sense. Mr. Tyson owns the sugarcane, you own the formula for the plastics, and I'm supposed to be offered up as a human sacrifice on the altar of the industrial progress. Is that it?
LINUS:: You make it sound so vulgar, David, as if the son of hot dog dynasty were being offered in marriage to the daughter of the mustard king. Surely... surely you don't object to Elizabeth Tyson just because her father happens to have twenty million dollars? That's very narrow-minded of you, David.
Linus' dreams really are vulgar—and maybe even more vulgar than the film is willing to admit. Linus' whole industrial progress plan is built on sacrificing David, and Elizabeth Tyson too. And as it happens his machinations leave him happily with Sabrina—but what about David and Elizabeth? What happens to them? Somehow their dreams never matter, even at the end. That hardly seems fair.