Pros: Audrey Hepburn is lovely, and her chemistry with George Peppard is (sometimes) fun to watch.
Cons: Takes a light, bubbly, gutless attitude to prostitution, alcoholism, and the Deadly Sins.
The Bottom Line: My problem isn't that the romantic leads of Breakfast at Tiffany's are appalling, manipulative fuuck-ups. It's that we're not supposed to notice.
I’m open to hearing any answers besides the obvious to the question: why does Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany’s romantic heroine, receive $50 “every time [she] goes to the powder room”? In present-day money that’s well over $300 per visit, and it’s clear from the rest of the plot that she doesn’t sell drugs.
It’s equally obvious that she goes to the powder room a _lot_, given that she lives in an apartment in a very nice part of New York City, and that – given her unmistakable resemblance to the lovely Audrey Hepburn – $300 would be a fair price for her sexual services. Of course, romantic hero Paul Varjak is making his living as a gigolo (albeit a monogamous one), so perhaps it’s only fair.
Er... sorry there. I sound so negative, and for the wrong reasons. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a light, charming romantic comedy, and I’ve enjoyed plenty of light romantic comedies. It’s also a romance between a drunk, gold-digging, self-destructive, child-abandoning prostitute who takes her rage out on her cat, and a lazy male-chauvinist gigolo, but I have nothing against that either. In fact, I’d enjoy seeing a romance movie in which we are artfully led to root for a drunk, gold-digging, self-destructive, child-abandoning prostitute (without the cat-hurting, please) and a lazy male-chauvinist gigolo … if, I mean, that movie was honest about its characters, made a serious case for caring about them despite their huge flaws, and didn’t exist as a cross-promotional tool for a jewelry store. I could see John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch pulling it off, say. Or perhaps Paul Thomas Anderson, director of the great Boogie Nights.
Tiffany’s, however, passes off all these traits as incidental, harmless, and quirky. The Hays censorship codes surely helped: Paul’s job duties as a kept man are never specified. “Powder room” and “$50” are meanwhile the only references to Holly’s career, although if she’s a whorre, that explains why Paul, deeply hurt by her during their romance, hands her $50 “for the powder room” and walks off.
But let’s say that Holly is a merely a bathroom attendant in the restaurants of lavishly tipsy tippers: if anything that makes her a worse heroine. Prostitution is entrepeneurship, after all, small business. It shows initiative and personal responsibility, and it brings pleasure and consumer satisfaction without drowning anyone in marketing. Holly’s job is the most admirable thing about her.
**********
Audrey Hepburn’s a big part of Tiffany’s weird success, of course. Her Holly is beautiful and charismatic, plunging into situations with the self-confidence of the never-denied. George Peppard, as Paul, is handsome and has an earnestly likeable awkwardness. By their second major scene together, their chemistry is obvious, even though Holly tells him “You remind me of my brother Fred – you don’t mind if I call you Fred, do you?” (Paul agrees). Paul accepts interrogation about his career: “I’m a writer”, he states, and Holly has the sense to inquire “the kind that gets published and who people actually read?”. “Yes”, he says confidently, pointing to copies of his story collection. “Do you write every day?”, she asks, and with a pause he switches to the neutral “sure” that means “believe whatever makes you happy”. “Did you write today?”, she follows up, and he allows another “sure”. “Your typewriter doesn’t have a ribbon in it”, she points out, and I’m charmed both by her mischievous intelligence, and by the graceful acceptance of defeat with which he replies “it doesn’t? Oh.”
It’s late at night, and I’m equally charmed when she curls innocently on his lap, fully clothed, and asks if she can sleep there (she can). She is fearless and forward: the same traits that will help her organize parties for NYC’s rich and famous. Her forwardness also gives her the ability to suggest (and lead) a day-long date with Paul in which they take turns doing something the other had never done before. He had never drunk wine before breakfast; apparently it’s cute that Holly always does (and during breakfast, and before lunch, and during lunch…).
She, meanwhile, had never been to the public library before. In the world of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, librarians are mean old ladies who would rather say “SHHHHHHH!!” than meet a published author. I go to libraries two or three times a month at least, and I’ve never met a librarian like that; but then, I fear Holly’s habits can safely be taken as a stand-in for those of the movie’s makers. In which case they probably shoplifted all the time too. The cat-and-dog masks that Holly and Paul make off with (Paul had never shoplifted before) are adorable, chosen with expertise.
Everything is adorable. The 50-something husband of Holly Golightly, who married her five years ago when she was 14, is adorable, if sadly behind Tiffany’s liberated times. Her belief that she has no right to give a name to her cat (because he belonged to someone else first) is adorable, and Cat acts adorably unruffled when she picks him up and swings him absent-mindedly around. The stuffy man behind the desk at Tiffany’s, who agrees to engrave a ring from a Crackerjacks box, is adorable every time he raises his elegant eyebrows. The nice old mafioso Sal Tomato is adorable.
The way that Holly zeroes in on an ugly, bespectacled young man at a party, telling Paul (not yet her boyfriend) that “He’s the 9th-richest man under 50 in America!”, is adorable (“what an interesting fact to have memorized”, Paul comments). The fact the 9th-richest man under 50 in America would otherwise be worthy of utter contempt, because he’s ugly and bespectacled, is adorable. Laughing at the clumsiness of pathetic middle-aged drunk women is adorable, especially when the laughing is done by the 19-year-old drunk woman hosting the party. If you don’t believe me, check the lighting, and the tinkling glasses, and Audrey Hepburn’s smile.
**********
The one failure of judgment for which Tiffany’s does take a lot of criticism is Mickey Rooney’s role as Mr. Yunioshi, the comical Japanese landlord. He’s tres adorable – laugh at his adorable anger, his adorable face-paint, his adorable round glasses and pencil mustache, his adorable Japanese accent (look! he can’t pronounce an “L”!), the adorable way he bumps into things, and the adorable way he threatens to call the “po-rice” when Holly’s parties risk awakening the entire apartment complex. The portrayal is considered racist, because 1961 Hollywood assumed that all non-whites had to be portrayed as dumber than the Ashton Kutcher of Dude, Where’s My Car?
I dunno. Mr. Yunioshi’s scenes are unfunny, and painful, but racist? As a landlord, he’s making the steadiest legal income in the movie, so he’s a role model. And he’s the only character in the movie, with the arguable exception of Holly, whose story includes an inspirational learning curve. The first two times he’s disturbed while in the bath, he hauls himself up and cracks his forehead, WHOOMP, into a great round light hanging over his bath. But the final time he’s disturbed while in the bath, he hauls himself up and: the light’s no longer there. Victory!
Holly’s learning curve, if such it be, consists of learning that rich people don’t always want to marry drunk, gold-digging, self-destructive, child-abandoning prostitutes who take their rages out on cats. In other words, rich people can be bastards. Writers, on the other hand, are good-looking people who repeat the argument “You belong to me” as the natural correlary of “I love you”. Holly’s problem, according to Paul, is that she’s been priding herself too much on her independence and freedom (which is why she’s spent the entire movie trying to become married and dependent). The movie’s plot tension comes down to this: will she preserve her freedom by finding another rich bastard who will value her for the free spirit she is, or will she admit that she is Paul’s personal property because he loves her?
I won’t spoil the ending, nor will I wonder here why Jodie Foster never made a romantic comedy where she marries John Hinckley after he shoots the president for her.
**********
Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a widely-admired movie. Jack White, at the end of the White Stripes’ Elephant, sings a duet with a singer self-named Holly Golightly; Dmitri from Paris has a radio single sampling the line “I’m a very stylish girl” (spoken by the woman paying Paul’s gigolo fees). The very fine band Jets to Brazil are named for a poster on Holly’s wall. And, of course, Deep Blue Something recorded the omnipresent mid-90’s jangle-pop hit “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, which repeated the movie’s name about five dozen times without me ever figuring out what the song was about.
I do know what the movie’s about. If the movie’s makers had also known, and admitted that they’d known, they might have made a provocative work of art. Instead, Tiffany’s is a crass, amoral whitewashing (or in Rooney’s case light-yellow-washing) of a deeply unpleasant set of values. By keeping them subconscious, the movie became a hit.
From the opening strains of Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer s haunting, Oscar-winning song Moon River, you ll once again be under the alluring spell o...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.