Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

Watched 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' (1961) on Netflix.

It’s the story of Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), her life as a socialite, her naive ways, her pursuit of rich successful men, and her eventual choice of the not-so-successful writer Paul Varjak (George Peppard).

The movie is very light. So light that it is superficial. The woman is a socialite, attending parties, and such, so there must be superficiality, but showing parts of her personal life and the workings of her mind behind her make up would have helped to make the movie touch the audience in some way.

You go through the whole movie without ever being touched by it slightly, even once. I wouldn’t call that a great formula.
It ends with moral victory and that's a redeeming factor.

Holly (Audrey Hepburn) is endearing because of her naivete. If not for it, perhaps she would have come across as a gold digger, quite repulsive.

The tone in which the actors deliver their lines makes it seem more like theatre than cinema.

The movie has been deemed ‘culturally, aesthetically, historically significant’ and that’s a good reason why you may want to watch it.

The Japanese owner is a caricature with buck teeth, and thick spectacles. Running into walls, doors, just about everything, providing comic relief. Typical of the movies of those times - when humour was usually crass.

Women in parties are shown smoking using a long stick with the cigarette at the far end.

The social etiquette seems queer.

Paul touches his cold glass of drink to the bare back of a woman in the party he doesn't even know.

Another man lifts up a woman and seats her on his shoulders with one leg dangling on each side of his face.

Another woman has what looks like a watch tied around her ankle.

Holly and Paul with their limited means look for something below ten dollars to purchase at Tiffany’s, a Jewlry store in New York, and are offered “a sterling silver telephone dialler for 6.75 including federal tax”

So there used to be ‘telephone diallers’, and as other utilitarian objects, they were made stylish and fancy, such as ‘sterling silver telephone dialler’ and they cost 6.75 dollars in those times.

An interior designer was called the Decorator.

New York taxis weren't yellow.

Holly is shown whistling like a man, for a taxi. Perhaps it was an attempt to show how naive she was.

There is frequent mention of the powder room and Holly’s getting paid 50 dollars by men for the powder room, I am not sure what that means.

Holly is allowed to visit a convict Sally Tomato in his prison every week to provide conversation or light talk and gets paid a 100 dollars by his lawyer.

The actors are shown eating ‘Cracker Jack’ and pocketing the little prize that came with it. Paul chooses to have his cracker jack prize, a ring, engraved, as a present for Holly.

Cracker Jack is an American brand of snack consisting of molasses-flavored, caramel-coated popcorn and peanuts, well known for being packaged with a prize of trivial value inside. Some food historians consider it the first junk food.

All of these, characteristic of that time period, not prevalent today, are what make the movie culturally, aesthetically and historically significant, I presume.

Paul is ‘kept’ by his ‘decorator’, Emily, a rich older woman. When Paul, finding himself in love with Holly, tells her towards the end of the movie, he has another woman on his mind, she says,

“She would have to be someone rich, someone who could help you.”
To which Paul answers “Curiously enough, she is a girl who can't help anyone, not even herself. I can help her and it's a nice feeling for a change”
So true, while we like to receive help, care, presents and love from other people, we have a deep seated psychological need to be needed, to be of value, to be of use to someone - so I thought. The scene of this conversation depicts that truth very well.

I noted these lines for they seemed interesting.

“You could always tell what kind of a person a man thinks you really are by the earrings he gives you”

“People in New York never get to know their neighbours”

“That's the trouble. It's a mistake you always made trying to love a wild thing.

You mustn't give your heart to a wild thing. The more you do, the stronger they get.

Until they are strong enough to run into the woods, fly into a tree, then to higher trees and then the sky”

“She is amusingly and superficially talented but deeply and importantly, no”.

“It would be tacky to wear diamonds before I am forty”

“He is too prim and cautious to be my ideal”

“There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion”

#westerncinema