Love For Sale-The Film Adaptation Of Truman Capote’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961)-A Film Review 

DVD Review     

By Sam Lowell 

Breakfast At Tiffany’s, starring Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, based loosely on Truman Capote’s novel of the same name, 1961

Okay, okay in the interest of full disclosure I will admit that I was smitten as a teenager by Audrey Hepburn in the role of Holly Golightly in the film under review, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Okay, okay as well that some fifty plus years later I am still smitten by Ms. Hepburn in re-watching this film. There is something beyond the storyline here which after all is pretty much a variation of the small town girl trying to avoid being swallowed up by the big city, but also casting her fate with surviving by one means or another in that same big city. Something about a certain dewy freshness that transcends the ambiguous way that she was trying to make her way in the big city. (Under a less restrictive interpretation Holly’s “profession” today would be called outright a call girl or at least a mistress-in-waiting but back then that dewy freshness created by a coded Hollywood would not tolerate such designations). So the thing plays out as a traditional boy meets girl love story of which about a billion filsm have now been made in all forms and in all languages.       

   

Here is how a small girl in the big city and a down at the heels young writer with promise played out in 1961. Holly, Hepburn’s role, had been dazzled by the bright light of New York (unlike most small town girls with the itch to get famous who headed west to the Pacific Ocean to be washed clean by Hollywood). As the film begins it is obvious that the stylishly dressed and sophisticated Holly has worked out some compromise with the big city (and on those days when she was losing in the compromise department there was always Tiffany’s to shelter her from life’s storms), has more suitors and admirers than she can shake a stick at. A party girl no question. Enter Paul Varjak, played by George Peppard, a budding writer who is the “protégé” of a wealthy socialite who is footing his bills until he strikes gold in the literary world who moves into Holly’s apartment building. (On this reading those who claim Holly is a call girl would be forced to concede that Paul is a gigolo making for an interesting “pairing”-but in the double standard of the time he is merely a “protege” and leave it at that). From about minute one they are attracted to each other. 

No question if the film were produced today they would have already been under the satin sheets but then it had to play out as a game of cat and mouse (complete with “Cat” as the cat) because he had no dough and Holly was looking for the bright lights. So the film goes round and round with them in and out of romance. Mostly longingly out. But then fate comes into play. Holly who in the meantime during one of those out periods had taken up with a rich Brazilian to get married and have everything her small town dreams wanted, craved. Problem was that somebody fingered her place, her as a conduit for drugs (she had a weird “companionship” relationship with a “godfather” who doing time up in Sing Sing whom she visited every week for “pay.”). The proper Brazilian dropped her like a hot potato. Re-enter Paul and in the rain they have all their sins washed away by true love (but still no satin sheets). Yeah, I had a crush on dear Audrey and I got that hard facts re-confirmed in this one. Classic early 1960s film if not exactly what Capote was getting at.