One of my all time favourite movies is Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). It's a long movie, and admittedly, the plot moves quite slowly, as most movies from that time seem to do. However, my love for Breakfast at Tiffany's exceeds how long the movie is. My love for this movie stems from one main thing- the character Holly Golightly.
Holly Golightly is a New York socialite. She's constantly striving to make more money, and goes to any lengths to get it- whether by marrying a rich man, delivering messages to a man in jail, even dating a rich man... it seems that she's always trying to make money. At first, the thought is that she is only wanting to get money to go out and spend it again.
Holly seems to be completely carefree. She calls everyone "dahling" and will chat off everyone's ear if they let her. She befriends the man that lives beneath her in her building, simply for the reason that he reminds her of her brother Fred. And because this man, whose name is actually Paul, reminds her of Fred, she calls him "Fred, dahling".
My favourite part of Breakfast at Tiffany's is simply Cat. Holly Golightly owns a cat and simply calls him "cat".
"He's all right! Aren't you, cat? Poor cat! Poor slob! Poor slob without a name! The way I see it I haven't got the right to give him one. We don't belong to each other. We just took up one day by the river. I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together. I'm not sure where that is but I know what it is like."
"I'm like cat here, a no-name slob. We belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to us. We don't even belong to each other."
At the end of the movie, when Holly is leaving to go to Brazil to marry Jose, she throws cat out of her taxi in the midst of an argument with Paul, into the rain of course, leaving him to run into an alley. The taxi keeps going, and Paul gets out after realizing he can't do anything to convince Holly to stay, even though he loves her. Holly continues on in the taxi, mouth trembling, before realizing she was wrong. she gets out of the taxi, going back to look for cat and running back into paul, who was also looking for cat. they find cat, hiding in a box, and kiss in the rain before holly decides to stay and the movie ends. the scene where holly is looking for cat in the alley is easily the saddest one of the movie, I have been known to get very involved in this scene :') and it shows a new depth to holly.
however, the finding cat scene isn't the only part that shows more depth to holly. over the course of Breakfast at Tiffany's, we find out that holly was a child bride and ran away, that her parents died when she was young, that her brother Fred is in the military (and later in the movie is killed in action), and that the money she is saving is to bring him home and start a new life together. Holly lives her life masked, on the surface looking like a flighty, unreliable, shallow girl, when in truth she is trying her best to become a rock for her brother.
sometimes, I identify with Holly. I act like everything's okay, I laugh, I smile, I attempt to look like I'm having fun, even though i'm not really. I think everyone has elements of Holly's personality, and that's why she's such a relateable character. There are always things that show that people aren't okay, and all it can take is someone like Paul to persist and break through that mask.
"Anyone who ever gave you confidence... you owe them a lot." -Holly Golightly
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