BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (1961) ***1/2 Perhaps the prime example of a director successfully making a film of a work of literary fiction (rather than a film about). Much has been made about Truman Capote's masterwork being "cleaned up," but I have to disagree: sex was of such secondary importance in the book that it was entirely reasonable for Blake Edwards not to spend much time on it. What Edwards' film demonstrates is the impossibility of perfectly making a film about great literature: where Capote's work points to eternal possibilities and truths, Edwards can only offer a spectacular snapshot in time. Edwards' New York is emotionally exhausting, and Audrey Hepburn deserves every accolade to her style and charm. Capote's Holly Golightly (and so Edwards') is one of the purest characters ever conceived, in an artistic sense anyway, and Audrey brings her to life with something rivaling perfection (not sure about the hair in a scene or two, tsk, tsk). A rarely developed subtext is how Holly, even as she races towards her own ruin, makes everyone around her better. Are the wages of freedom the redemption of others? Henry Mancini's compositions usually strike me as rather cold and lifeless, but "Moon River" is probably the closest approximation that a white man has ever got to writing soul music, and it's more the creation of a new category than an approximation. It would have been nice to have the Louis Armstrong version somewhere, but that's the kind of stuff they do in remakes in Heaven, where they may also remove the orchestrated backing from Audrey's own beautiful rendition. With Audrey Hepburn shining like this the entire rest of the cast isn't more than incidental, but at least George Peppard isn't awful, and Buddy Ebsen adds an earthly quality that Capote had only passing familiarity with. For someone with such incredible insights into the motivations of others, Capote reveals very little about his own, did you ever notice that? John McGiver is the only one who plays to the level of Hepburn, staying with her for several lines as the dignified embodiment of the best of anglo-culture. Capote doctrinaires should probably leave the film about the time of the liberation of the cat, but the rest of us can realize that it is the best role of literature to leave one thinking, and the best role of film to leave one smiling.
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