BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S - DVD review

This 1961 movie version of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" may have changed the character of Holly Golightly from the one Truman Capote had in mind in his short novel, but it became one of Audrey Hepburn's trademark roles. Her blend of big-city polish and back-home naïveté have delighted audiences for nearly five decades, and the movie remains one of Hollywood's most engaging and most popular romances.

Holly is the spunky, free-spirited "party girl" who revels in her worldly lifestyle. It is a telling comment on the early 1960s that no one in the film ever refers to her as a call girl, nor did audiences then or now seem to notice or care. In any case, she's a phony, in a reality not the classy, glamorous, sophisticate she pretends to be but a small-town girl from Tulip, Texas, who has gone to the big city of New York to find herself. She winds up accepting money from gentlemen for "going to the powder room." When she gets a bad case of the "mean reds"--that is, when she feels downhearted--she heads off to do some browsing at Tiffany's jewelry store.

Then she meets a new neighbor in her apartment building, Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a would-be writer being "kept" by a wealthy older woman (Patricia Neal). Holly and Paul immediately become soul mates, and the story chronicles their on-again, off-again relationship. So, basically, we've got the curious situation of a prostitute and a gigolo falling in love.

Buddy Ebsen plays a patient but not-too-understanding veterinarian from back home in Tulip. Martin Balsam is a fast-talking Hollywood agent who's trying to get Holly into movies. Jose-Luis de Villalonga is a Brazilian millionaire Holly tries to marry. And Alan Reed is a mob boss, Sally Tomato, that Holly visits on a weekly basis in Sing Sing Prison.

The only jarring note in the cast is Mickey Rooney's portrayal of a racially stereotyped Japanese-American. It was an accepted stereotype of the day, and one I'm sure a lot of people thought was daringly funny, but I guarantee it is offensive enough to make anyone today cringe in embarrassment. Times change, in this case for the better.

While the first half of the film does a good job sticking to Capote's vision, in traditional movieland style Holly is far more vulnerable here than she is in the book, and the filmmakers provide a much happier, fairy-tale ending. We'll never know what the movie might have been like without them, but we do know that these elements play a big part in what audiences have always loved about the film.

By and large, the story remains appealing, even if a few short stretches can be tedious, and the urbane, worldly-wise humor can seem a bit pretentious. It's also more than a little depressing from today's standpoint to watch an entire cast smoking and drinking itself into oblivion.

Blake Edwards directed the film ("Days of Wine and Roses," "The Pink Panther," "10") and Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini collaborated on the words and music for the Academy Award-winning theme song, "Moon River," with Mancini winning a further Oscar for his background score. Additionally, the Academy nominated Ms. Hepburn for Best Actress, George Axelrod for Best Writing, and a slew of people for Best Art Direction and Set Decoration.

Video:
The video quality on Paramount's earliest DVD release was sharply etched, with colors extremely vivid. Those qualities remain in this new Centennial Edition. However, the early version was also more than a bit grainy, with occasional age flecks and lines, which are now largely gone, thanks to a digital remaster and what appears to be the application of some DNR and edge enhancement. In the present edition the screen is much cleaner than before, except that one notices less detail, especially in facial close-ups, and some degree of haloing. The anamorphic widescreen measures a 1.85:1 ratio, with solid black levels.

Audio:
The audio choices are Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital monaural. DD 5.1 is thankfully the default at startup. It projects a reasonably wide front-channel stereo spread, but only on some musical tracks does it utilize the rear speakers for ambient reflections. It's fairly clear sound, limited only in dynamics and frequency range compared to newer releases.

Extras:
Disc one of this two-disc Centennial Collection edition contains the feature film, plus an audio commentary by one of the original producers of the film, Richard Shepherd, whose laconic remarks are informative and authoritative without being exactly sparkling. Also on disc one you'll find English, French, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles, along with fourteen scene selections.

Disc two contains a range of items pertaining to the film, the star, and the studio, most of them featurettes, some of them newly made in 2008, others made for the 2005 DVD edition. First up is "A Golightly Gathering," a 2008, twenty-minute segment in which many of the actors from the movie's cocktail scene reunite to reminisce. It's kind of fun, even though it's also sad to think that most of the film's major stars are dead. Next is "Henry Mancini: More Than Music," a 2008, twenty-one-minute piece on the composer. After that is "Mr. Yunioshi: An Asian Perspective," seventeen minutes, 2008, in which various Asian filmmakers comment on Mickey Rooney's atrocious Japanese stereotype and on the role of Asian actors and filmmakers in Hollywood through the years. The final newly made featurette is a four-minute tour of the Paramount studios, "Behind the Gates: The Tour."

After those items are several 2005 featurettes. The first of these is "The Making of a Classic," sixteen minutes on the adaptation of the Capote story for the screen; followed by "It's So Audrey: A Style Icon," eight minutes on Ms. Hepburn's delicately simple style; "Brilliance in a Blue Box," six minutes on the history of the famous jewelry story; "Audrey's Letter to Tiffany," two minutes on a letter Hepburn wrote to preface a book about the Tiffany store; an original theatrical trailer; and galleries of production, movie, and publicity stills.

In honor of this being a prestige Centennial Collection release, Paramount also provide an illustrated booklet insert and an elegant slipcover for the double slim-line keep case.

Parting Thoughts:
"Breakfast at Tiffany's" maintains a spirited bounce in its step that is still infectious today. The ending aside, it also maintains a good distance from any obvious sentimentality. Viewers who like the film remain diehard loyalists for life. Although it is not among my favorite movies, it surely has its charms.