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Rating: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (1961)
For Holly Golightly, there's nothing better in the world than seeking refuge at Tiffany's, perhaps for a breakfast at dawn. Irresistibly chic in her Givenchy, the Holly played by Audrey Hepburn dreamily munches in front of the austere and understanding Tiffany's, the only one able to bring an unreal quiet to chaotic New York.
What drives the young woman to Tiffany's isn't certainly the diamonds - which "before forty look vulgar" -, but rather the "mean reds," that sudden fear of an unknown something. Holly is waiting to find a place where she feels as safe as at Tiffany's: only then will she feel entitled to name her cat and stop running away from her wild soul, which has led her from one family to another, from the province to the metropolis, from a devoted husband's love to countless worms and superworms among which to find a wealthy one who can guarantee her material security. In the meantime, she entrusts her painful bookkeeping to a jailed boss who exploits her as an unaware messenger of criminal plans, in a vain attempt to save enough to support herself and her brother. It is in this turmoil that Holly meets her new neighbor, a writer resigned to a stagnant creative crisis, who is kept by a rich married woman. As the script of the most classic of American romantic comedies dictates, the elective affinities of the two will lead them to the fairy tale happy ending.
In truth, Truman Capote's 1958 novel of the same name on which George Axelrod's screenplay is based was decidedly harsher and less comforting, but the original character remains the tormented, frivolous, fragile, contradictory, naive, irreverent, and frightened Holly . Director Blake Edwards (Victor Victoria, The Pink Panther) knows how to make Holly shine with Hepburn's grace, who gracefully slips away from a degenerated party as well as from a criminal complicity indictment . The soundtrack is signed by Henry Mancini (The Pink Panther), who on this occasion won two Oscars: Best Score and Best Song for the melancholic "Moon River." The film as a whole has a compact plot with a brisk pace, thanks also to the dialogues which are sometimes light, sometimes sharp; the comedic note is given by the pseudo-Japanese neighbor (Mickey Rooney), tormented by the daffy Holly.
Bittersweet, the portrait of a young woman fleeing from herself, scared of the responsibility of an adult life, disillusioned towards love, terrified by the idea of losing herself in another person and having to give up freedom. Freedom as the last resort of values of a child abandoned with her brother by her own family, of one who has been deprived of everything and has nothing else left to safeguard. Freedom that turns into infantilism, of one who never wants to grow up and juggles between tricks in an attempt to overcome the fear of living.
Or the fear of failure, which becomes the resignation of the male protagonist Paul (George Peppard), a kept lover at the beginning of the film, who thanks to Holly first finds his creative vein, then his job, finally his dignity and love.
Not to be underestimated is the acting performance of the meek ginger cat Putney.
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