Once a week on Friday, Uncle Bardie celebrates the creativity in others by shining a Spotlight on a movie, a song or a creator. This week’s Spotlight Movie is “Breakfast At Tiffany’s“ (1961):
There are a few perfect movies that a remake of them would be blasphemy. “The Sound of Music” (1965) and “The Big Lebowski” and “Casablanca” and “The Ladykillers” (1955) and David Lean’s “Doctor Zhivago” and “The Haunting of Hill House” (1959) and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. Oh, sure. Some have tried the remakes but they always turn out badly.
Blake Edwards knew something about making perfect movies. He directed some of the best of the best: Cary Grant, Peter Sellers, Tony Curtis and Julie Andrews. And, in his time, he would direct several very good movies, including “A Shot in the Dark” with Peter Sellers and “10” with Dudley Moore,Julie Andrews and Bo Derek. But “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is his masterpiece and that most perfectest of perfect movies.
There’s George Peppard and there’s Mickey Rooney and a cat named Cat and there’s New York City in the early 1960s and, of course, there’s Tiffany’s. What would a movie named “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” be without Tiffany’s? And then there is Audrey Hepburn. Nobody lit up the screen quite like Audrey Hepburn.
From the very first moments of Henry Mancini’s music and the cab driving down the empty New York City street, then stopping at Tiffany’s and Audrey Hepburn getting out of the taxi, I’m hooked. Audrey, with her hair all bunned up, wears a black dress and a necklace of fake pearls and long black gloves. I can’t think of another actress who could play that moment with the grace and charm of Audrey Hepburn. You don’t know class until you’ve seen Audrey Hepburn on the screen.
Patrica Neal has set her writer, George Peppard, up in an apartment in a brownstone building. He’s her pet and she’s got him on her lease. Until he meets his neighbor, Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn.
One night George is at his typewriter and he hears Holly outside his window,
There’s no going back for George. Like us, he is smitten. Truman Capote may not have meant for his Holly Golightly to be the very fragile little girl with the tough exterior of the film. But that is the performance that Audrey Hepburn gives us. And it’s the one that makes Holly Golightly so darned memorable.
I’ve loved this movie since I first saw it. So if you’re in need of a little magic, then let the Audrey shine. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” will definitely Audrey up your day.
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