Breakfast at Tiffany's

1961 - Dir.: Blake Edwards
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th December, 2009
"I was nothing like her, but I felt I could 'act' Holly. I knew the part would be a challenge, but I wanted it anyway. I always wonder if I risked enough on that one. I should have been a little more outrageous. But at the time, as a new mother, I was about as wild as I could be. If only I were a Method player, huh? But the fact is, I didn't really believe in The Method. I believed in good casting. And I'm still not sure about Holly and me..."

-Audrey Hepburn

Romantic comedy is a difficult genre to perfect and it has rarely been done as well as it is here. Hepburn and Peppard create the kind of screen chemistry that comes along all too rarely. Despite the sordid implications of the relationships portrayed, the humour and the Oscar-winning refrains of Henry Mancini's score maintain the feel-good factor. The result is a charming fable of love in big, bad New York. The magic owes a lot to the poise and waif-like beauty of the bewitching Hepburn. Her Givenchy-clad entrance, sashaying down a deserted street before gazing into the Tiffany's window display, is a moment of pure wonder. All this and one of the best cats ever to grace the screen!

• Holly is so closely associated with Audrey Hepburn that it's hard to believe that the author Truman Capote insisted that he wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the part. He'd sold the film rights for $65,000 to Paramount and the studio hired George Axelrod, author of The Seven Year Itch, to adapt the book for Monroe. She wanted Holly badly, but her acting coach Paula Strasberg turned down the part on the basis of its immorality.
• “Breakfast at Tiffany's” is almost, but not quite, ruined by Mickey Rooney's hideously stereotyped performance as Hepburn's Japanese neighbor, buck teeth and all. Intended to provide broad comedy at the time, the scenes provoke intense discomfort today and the movie has been banned in many cities with large Chinese populations in the USA
• Audrey Hepburn was Belgian but grew up in Nazi occupied Arnhem where she was known as Edda van Heemstra. She went to London in 1948 to study ballet. She made her screen debut in “Nederlands in 7 Lessen” playing an airline stewardess.