Breakfast At Tiffany’s, A Review

The short review, in a sentence, goes like this: A whack-job, feminist, gold-digging liberal with a cat with no name escapes the whack-job decisions she’s made in life so far to, presumably, marry the only orbiter in history to ever win the affections of the center of his universe.

Released in 1961 this must have been cutting edge for its time, what with the morals of the last few centuries thrown out like an unwanted cat. But for obvious reasons, the trans-Atlantic accent was retained. No reason for degeneracy to actually sound like degeneracy, or to look like it either for that matter.  No, better to give the world of collapsing morals an air of sophistication. It makes all of us who have succumbed to that dream feel better… and allows us to cling to a more haughty view of our depravity ta boot.

To explain the worst of it away, an old man from the backwoods, Jed Clampet, enters the scene just long enough to raise the specter of child abuse to excuse what would become a self-destructive life for the oh-don’t-we-feel-sorry-for-her, but-ain’t-she-strikingly beautiful, protagonist, played by Audry Hepburn.

Ah, but all movies have to have redemption. But in this tragedy of collapsing civilization one individual at a time, the redemption is thrown to the viewer as a civilization-sized question mark. Does the center of the universe marry her orbiter? Or does she regroup and start her search anew for another rich dude? I’m personally betting on the latter. But such selfishness and self-destruction don’t sell films. An Encounter with that true love, on the other hand, does, and amazingly enough, it still does. So if you’re into unicorns and saps, George Peppard is your man and this is your movie.

I spent $2.99 to rent this from Amazon.  For some reason, I honestly think that I’d rather have set a ten-spot ablaze.

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