Cinema
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Blake Edwards · 1961
Synopsis
New York, at dawn. A young woman in an evening gown gets out of a taxi in front of Tiffany, on Fifth Avenue, and eats a pastry in front of the window. Holly Golightly lives on the money of rich men, fifty dollars for the powder room, and visits the gangster Sally Tomato in Sing Sing every week, who pays her a hundred dollars to pass a weather report to his lawyer. She has a cat with no name. Paul Varjak, a writer who has published nothing for five years and lives at the expense of a rich woman, moves into her building.
Context
The leading role had been written for Marilyn Monroe, whom Capote wanted but whom Lee Strasberg dissuaded from accepting it; the writer felt that Paramount had betrayed him. After a preview, a studio executive wanted to cut the song the heroine sings at her window, and Audrey Hepburn objected; the song received the Oscar the following year. The Japanese landlord, played by Mickey Rooney in make-up, has been criticised as a caricature since the 1990s, and Edwards said he regretted that choice.
Who it is for
A comedy one hour and fifty-five minutes long, in colour, in which a made-up white actor plays the role of a Japanese man.
Prizes and reception
Two Oscars in 1962, for music and for song, and inscribed in 2012 on the National Film Registry.
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