I feel that, in order to judge a film like Breakfast at Tiffany's fairly, I need to take it at 95% face value. I think part of accurately valuing art is seeing just how it stands up to the ultimate test - time. So, how does this massively popular film, with one of the most iconic female characters in Hollywood history, stack up today? Not well. It has nothing to do with the technical elements of the film - cinematography, editing, pacing, music. The disaster lies in the portrayal of Holly Golightly, a character supposedly being criticized for her reckless spirit, but in actuality is celebrated for her idiosyncratic unaccountability and glibness.
The film centers on an upscale apartment complex in New York, where Paul, a struggling writer, moves in and meets Holly Golightly, the building's resident high school thesp (over-the-top acting is Audrey Hepburn's forte, naturally). Intrigued by her quirks and flippant socialite lifestyle, Paul begins to spend more and more time with her. The two eventually begin to confide in one another and emotions are thrown around, but Holly's tendencies soon send her flying back to her careless, gold-digging ways.
Breakfast at Tiffany's features some very well-constructed camerawork and gorgeous cinematography, that would have been better served on a character study with three-dimensional mirth. All the scenes in and outside the apartment complex have a very careful, lock-and-flow alternation that frames the meticulous set design with grace. From Holly's apartment of curiosities to the austerity of Tiffany's, the film seems to craft a diverse range of flora and fauna, all within a five or six block radius.
The film is obviously supposed to be a cautionary tale, but with the glitz of New York, an alluring actress like Hepburn filling Holly's shoes and the delightfully bizarre decorum of her apartment, I think most people are too dazzled to care. In essence, you can think of Holly Golightly as a prototype for the wanderlust pixie image that so many women have adopted and distorted over the years. Constantly strutting around like life is entitled to them, surrounding themselves with men under the pretense of "friendship" and wrapping it all up in a bow of eccentricity and tomboy elegance. Holly echoes these behaviors with her wild and superficial parties, her interest in marrying up to ease her financial burdens and her "dangling the keys" over Paul, the only man that genuinely cares about her.
Underneath that freewheeling exterior is a mass of insecurities, selfishness and a gnawing sense of hypocrisy. Holly is a woman with no direction, no direct claim on her life and she knows it. In a sense, the woman is tormented by her "nature", writing off any form of stability or authenticity as a "cage". With the right tone, Breakfast at Tiffany's could have been an extremely interesting portrait of a troubled woman, attempting to figure out how she wants to spend her life. Instead, it comes off as a shallow celebration of "wild hearted" women, with virtually no consequences to be found.
Even at the climax, where Paul, frustrated that Holly won't even acknowledge the great times they had together, finally tells her like it is: "You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself". Not moments before this, Holly was considering flying on a whim to Brazil, even after she finds out the rich suitor she was trying marry didn't want her. And yet Paul just accepts her back? After playing the jilted fool for so long? Would she really learn anything from such a quick turnaround? So, there is this retrograde acceptance of her behavior, even when the film purports that her spontaneity has only led to unhappiness.
It would have empowered the film immensely if there were white-hot consequences for her actions - something to really drive into her skull that such a frivolous lifestyle has a wide range of pitfalls. However, Breakfast at Tiffany's fails to send up the signal flares that so deserve to be shot, leaving an audience of uninitiated women to only take away the glamor of a wild existence. I get the feeling that generations of women have mistakenly identified Holly as a beacon of women's liberation and a personification of their vibrancy, when, in actuality, she is nothing more than a mirror reflection of the most disregarding qualities of men. She is not at all an early icon for feminism, which is about equality and ethics between the sexes. It's a distinction that I feel not enough will care to make then, now or in the future.
