Canter Bridge

If Helen of Troy possessed the face that launched a thousand ships, the young Audrey Hepburn must have been good for, say, nine hundred?

From the moment she steps out of the yellow New York cab in front of Tiffany’s, Hepburn dazzles, supported by the sturdy performance of George Peppard, who is the sensible foil to her zany role as Holly Golightly. Peppard’s Paul also makes his entrance by alighting from a yellow cab, but that is the last time he and Holly have anything in common in this film. ‘Good thing opposites attract.

I bought this DVD because I was born too late to know Hepburn in her glory days, and I wanted to understand her mystique. Glory endures, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s showcases not only Hepburn’s flair for romantic comedy and witty one-liners, but also her darker side. In spite of the fact that the genre assures you that things will turn out well, Holly Golightly’s self-destructive side is authentically troubling as you make your way to the predictable dénouement.

Holly can’t think of anything she’s never done. Still, her light touch and random quirks—she leaves her apartment’s mailbox slight ajar, for it warehouses the perfume and the mirror she needs as she leaves to fulfill her duties as what today we would describe as a call girl—make her more than a workaday social climber. ‘I do not accept drinks from disapproving gentlemen’ is one of her tenuous claims to dignity as she strives to figure out who she really is, now that she’s ‘not Lula Mae any more’.

Peppard’s performance falls short of great acting, but if Hepburn needed a solid backdrop for her star turn, she found it in Peppard. Half-way through the film, one finds oneself liking both of these characters: the safe, stolid one who is indeed a man that’s ‘kept by a woman’ and the crazy ‘real phony’—that’s a good thing, in light of the alternatives—who is Hepburn’s Holly.

Hepburn has a lighter touch elsewhere, but Breakfast is worth anybody’s viewing as a standard piece in an immortal actress’ repertoire and a period piece of 1960s Americana. I recommend it heartily.