[BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S screens Saturday August 4th at 8:00 pm at the Palace Theatre as part of Cinema at the Square]
Review by Charles Cassady Jr.
Elsewhere
on this site I vent my contempt for the general run of “date movies”
and Valentine’s Day in general. However, I must be kind to BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S,
screening in revival here coincident to the unfortunate
romance-connected holiday (I guess if militant Islam conquers us,
Valentine’s Day will be banned under Sharia law; is that a silver lining
or what?). BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S is a celluloid valentine, to
the only things that really deserve a valentine – to New York City in
1961, to the beauty and grace of Audrey Hepburn, and to youthful
illusions and metropolitan delusions. All are given a glossy sheen in
champagne direction by the recently deceased Blake Edwards.
It’s
inspired by the Truman Capote novella, about one of the original New
York club kids, socialite Holly Golightly (Hepburn). We meet her mainly
via the POV of Paul (George Peppard), her upstairs neighbor, who
observes the stylish, white-gloved party girl leading a seemingly
charmed life in a nonstop whirl of all-night soirees and suitors. On the
surface she’s an ultra-sophisticate, but Paul senses there’s more (or
less) than meets the eye, and ultimately Holly’s true nature comes out
in the wash. One character famously sums up the heroine in the script
adapted by the fine playwright-screenwriter George Alexlrod: “She’s a
phony all right – but a real phony.” Manhattan women never had a better
definition.
One of my arcane movie books claims that
Audrey Hepburn’s ascent as a movie starlet was a collective audience
rebellion against Hollywood’s prevailing big-busted blonde bombshell
image, the theory being that American tastes shifted to petite,
dark-haired, doe-eyed, flat-chested Audrey over the likes of Marilyn
Monroe or Jayne Mansfield. A sweet proposition, but that's kind of like
thinking that Americans would refuse the chance to invade a smaller
foreign country, and probably just as invalid. But when Henry Mancini’s
Oscar-winning “Moon River” theme song swells on the soundtrack, you get
so damned carried away by BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S you’ll buy into
anything the movie sells, despite its occasional overstated sentiment or
caricatures. The most notorious of the latter is Mickey Rooney as a
bucktoothed Japanese, a dwarfy camera nut living next to Holly who is
disturbed by her rackets. I believe clips of this character in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S were used to exemplify racism in DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY. Show of hands: who remembers anything about DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY? Who would like to live in the world of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S? I rest my case. 3 ½ out of 4 stars.
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