Breakfast at Tiffany's

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Blake Edwards¶s Breakfast at Tiffany¶s: A Timeless Classic



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November, 24th 2011

Blake Edwards¶s Breakfast at Tiffany¶s: A Timeless Classic

Breakfast at Tiffany¶s is a modern fairy tale about love and the feeling of belonging.

The movie lingers in the memory of its audience as a charming, romantic tale due to

its dreamy, moony quality, equally conveyed by the actors, the visuals and the music.

I. The movie focuses on an unusual but fairy-tale like love story, with an

optimistic ending, which can be considered a constant appeal for audiences of

all times.

A. Holly and Paul share a very romantic affair which is, at the same

time, a f ulfilment of their aspirations.

1. The story focuses on the positive turn in the protagonists¶

lives, from their dissatisfaction with the past and the present to a

happy f uture.

2. While finding each other, the protagonists find love but also

peace and a sense of belonging.

B. The characters, including the protagonists, are idealized.



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1. Holly and Paul could be considered as morally reprehensible,

instead they are inherently good and idealistic people.

2. Other characters are also idealized: Sally Tomato is a cer tainly

a good character for a dr ug dealer who is par t of the mafia.

C. The setting, New York City in the 1960¶s, is idealized as a place

where dreams become tangible.

II. The acting, the visuals and the music of the movie also render it

unforgettable and enhance its fairy-tale quality.

A. Hepburn gives Holly a cer tain buoyancy and airiness, which is par tly

responsible for the dreaminess of the movie itself.

B. The movie focuses on glamour: Hepburn¶s fashionable attires, the

par ties, the jewellery store and a beautif ul sight of New York city.

C. The soundtrack by Henry Mancini is in tune with eerie atmosphere

of the film.



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I.

Half a century af ter having been released, the timeless classic Breakfast at

Tiffany¶s has not lost its lustre. Its haunting quality, however, defies simple

description. Inspired by Tr uman Capote¶s novella, the movie does not boast an

extraordinary plot and yet it is stunning on many levels. The film is a mélange of

romance, comedy and a little drama, all blended in the love story between a dazzling

socialite, Holly Golightly and a writer who makes a living as a gigolo. Despite some of

its flaws, such as excessive stereotyping in the case of cer tain characters or

situations, the movie lingers in the memory of its audience as a charming, romantic

tale due to its dreamy, moony quality, equally conveyed by the actors, the visuals and

the music. Breakfast at Tiffany¶s is first and foremost an exquisite fantasy, where all

dreams come tr ue. The mesmerizing visuals and the award-winning soundtrack by

Henry Mancini, Moon River , together with Audrey Hepburn¶s dainty and magnetic

presence, contribute to the movie¶s dreamlike atmosphere. Seemingly inspired by the

jewellery store behind its title, the film itself has the bright finish of a gemstone and

preciousness.

George Axelrod, the writer of the script, altered the original story to a great

extent. If in Tr uman Capote¶s novella, the two main characters are a socialite and a

homosexual, whose lives intersect accidentally and eventually separate, in the movie

the encounter between the two becomes much more meaningf ul. Holly and Paul are

here kindred spirits, both trying to make a living in an unor thodox way and, at the

same time, both aspiring to reinvent themselves and find their peace. In many ways,

Holly is the tr ue lead character in Capote¶s book with Paul having but an incidental

par t in the story itself and a more prominent role as a storyteller and a witness. The



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novel ends in the relatively cold voice of Paul who kept his promise of finding the cat

but who seems now almost entirely detached from Holly: ³«He'd arrived somewhere

he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too´ (Capote 116). The

movie, however, shapes Paul¶s character as the salvaging element in Holly¶s life.

Thus, the more realistic and cr ude story in the book is here made into a dreamy

romance, with an optimistic ending.

Both Holly and Paul suffer from loneliness and have somewhat dramatic

backgrounds. Holly is r unning away from an untimely marriage and a dull life in the

countryside and Paul, his dreams of being published unf ulfilled and his financial

means very scarce, is suppor ted by an older married woman whom he does not love.

The movie captures their seemingly glamorous lives and unusual lives. Audrey

Hepburn as Holly is seen displaying an impressive array of fashionable and

extremely elegant outfits, throwing loud, unconventional although swanky par ties and

most of all, being assaulted by suitors. The movie clearly emphasizes Holly¶s

innocence and naïveté, rather than her questionable morality. Hepburn por trays her

as a delicate and wild character, who manages to remain pure in spirit despite being

constantly surrounded by ³rats´, as she calls the men who pursue her. George

Peppard as Paul is also por trayed as an inherently good character although

somewhat bland. What is interesting about the relationship established between the

two is that the usual game of seduction is hardly present since they star t off with no

expectations. Being poor and therefore avid for money, Holly and Paul do not take

their relationship seriously. At the very beginning of the movie, Holly receives Paul in

her apar tment in very flimsy attire and the same night she cuddles beside him in bed,

although they are just ³friends´. Thus, intimacy is established very early in their

relationship and the usual stages of a romantic affair are ignored. Nonetheless, both



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Holly and Paul long for a different type of f ulfilment and their relationship eventually

evolves in a romantic direction, although the transition is very smooth.

The movie is therefore anything but a typical romance. The protagonists are

not innocent lovers meeting and falling in love, but highly versed ones who become

close precisely because they hanker af ter disinterested and unsullied love. In this

sense, the movie is a superbly romantic story, whose lead characters overcome

countless obstacles to be together. Holly¶s aversion towards the idea of belonging is

probably her most emblematic trait. In her str uggle for survival, she feels compelled

to renounce her emotional needs and become unattached. The nameless cat is, of

course, the living proof of the fight she leads against herself. The film impresses, first

of all, through the unusual love story and its optimistic outcome. The tension between

Holly and Paul throughout the story and the poignant romantic scenes, exude a fairy-

tale like atmosphere. The effect is especially strong since Holly is an unlikely princess

and Paul an unlikely prince, who, never theless, choose the happiness brought by

love instead of that brought by financial comfor t. Other characters suppor t the view of

an idealistic setting as well. Thus, the dr ug dealer Sally Tomato, who almost costs

Holly her freedom, is por trayed as a gentle character, ³a darling old man´, as Holly

states in the movie. Moreover, New York in the 1960¶s is also por trayed here in an

idealistic vein, as a sor t of nexus of the universe, a city where characters come to

reinvent themselves and where dreams come tr ue: ³The movie is«a celebration of

the city as a place to which people who are unhappy with their lives come to reinvent

themselves, a place where dreams come tr ue´ (Pomerance 23). Both Holly and Paul

are rootless people, who come to New York to find something they were missing and

f ulfil their destiny. Symbolically, in the movie as opposed to the book, Holly¶s



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depar ture for Brazil is stalled by Paul, and thus the lovers find a sense of belonging in

the metropolis.

The movie¶s success is not solely dependent on the fairy-tale like love story

per se but also on the acting, the visuals and the music accompanying it. Audrey

Hepburn¶s performance is, by itself, a masterpiece. Her exquisite beauty, her

glamorous attires and her elegance dazzle the eye throughout the movie. She seems

to look, move and talk in an out-of-the-world way, as would a sprite. Her gripping

impersonation of an apparently corr upt but, never theless, innocent young woman

adds a dramatic quality to the role. The lonely, impromptu breakfast in front of the

window of the jewellery store which opens the film could be said to showcase a

superficial desire for money and riches on Holly¶s par t. However, in Hepburn¶s

interpretation of the role, we see a girl who is rather fascinated by the beauty and

perfection of jewellery rather than by their actual material value. Another scene which

has a strong impact is that of Holly¶s interpretation of Moon River while sitting at an

open window. The sof t music and the dreamy lyrics highlight the overall message of

the film: Breakfast at Tiffany¶s is a movie about longing, be it for love or for a

sentiment of belonging or homecoming.

To conclude, Blake Edwards¶s Breakfast at Tiffany¶s has the appeal of a

modern fairy-tale, which embodies both general and specific, American ideals. It is a

movie about the feeling of belonging, where New York is por trayed as a magical

place where wonders occur and, at the same time, a romantic love story with a happy

ending. The plot as well as the visuals, the soundtrack and the general atmosphere

oozed by the film are designed to give an optimistic view of life and human nature in

general. Its timelessness is due, per haps, to the timelessness of the ideals it

embodies.



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Works Cited

Breakfast at Tiffany¶s. Dir. Blake Edwards. Perf. Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard

and Patricia Neal. Paramount, 1961. Film.

Capote, Tr uman. Breakfast at Tiffany¶s. New York: Random House, 2008. Print.

Pomerance, Murray. City that Never Sleeps: New York and the Filmic Imagination.

New York: Rutgers State University, 2007. Print.

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Breakfast at Tiffany's

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