Breakfast at Tiffany's

 

Viewed through the lens of these distressing times, Blake Edward's romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) takes on a mercenary cast that is quite familiar these days.

Audrey Hepburn's ebullient Holly Golightly, the former Texas child bride turned New York high society escort, is cut glass and paste in a diamond world. Her strangely ambiguous fascination with Tiffany & Co. doesn't appear to be about the jeweler's baubles and bangles. Rather the story suggests that she finds safety and security in money and in those who have it.

George Peppard's struggling author, Paul Varjak, is more grounded than downstairs neighbor Holly but he is just as imprisoned. He is being kept by an older, wealthy woman (Patricia Neal), a relationship that seems to have blocked his creative juices as he hasn't written anything new in years. That changes after he meets Holly and finds inspiration, and publishable material, in her uncorked life.

The film, which includes the much criticized yellow face performance by Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi, presents Holly and Paul as naifs among drunken wolves, unprepared for life's disappointments and, in the case of Holly, impressively self-centered for someone with so little evident talent, pushing lovestruck Paul away to chase an impossible dream.

The two end up reconciling, kissing in the rain after rescuing, again, Holly's nameless cat, "Moon River" swelling and the city receding. All of this was a bonanza for the picture in the '60s but today no doubt invites many to wonder how long it would be before they run out of material and money and moonlight.