Am I weird because I didn’t like Breakfast at Tiffany’s? It seems to be near the top of everyone’s list of favorite movies. On CBC Radio a few days ago, Bill Richardson posed the question “what movie would you like to be watching during your last moments of life,” and this was his choice.
I’ve only seen it once. About six years ago I was at the video store looking for a rental to watch by myself and there it was. It had long been on my list of “must see” movies — based on reputation — so I took it home and plugged it in. Due to my notoriously bad memory I don’t have a clear memory of the specifics of the movie. But I do remember impressions well, and my biggest impression was that I though Holly Golightly — the heroine — was an annoying ditz.
To some extent I could see what the fuss was about. After all, who wouldn’t want to be a successful Manhattan urbanite in the early-60s? The male lead, played by George Peppard, is just that — all narrow collars and cool swagger, perpetual cigarette held casually in his right hand. And then there’s Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, all swirly-haired and tiny-waisted. Those eyes!
I could see what was happening romantically. The two meet. They’re mutually smitten yet at odds. She is immediately established as desirable and hard to get, and he is established as worthy of the pursuit. All this against a hip and optimistic urban background.
However, I have a few prejudices. The first is unworthy of critical thinking but I’ll mention it anyway — I’ve always disliked George Peppard. I’m sure he was a nice guy and I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I only really knew him from silly television shows from the 1960s and 70s, the most egregiously stupid of which was “The A Team.” He was too blond, and too suave. I had the impression he was never acting — it was just baseline George Peppard undramatically reciting his lines.
My other prejudice is against this idea of the charming but silly girl as some kind of role model for urban womanhood.
I remember being attracted to ditzy chicks when I was very young — say before I was 12. All I had to go on was what I saw on mainstream television and early James Bond movies, which consisted mainly of heroic men rescuing and otherwise one-upping silly women. To an impressionable young mind eager to understand How Things Worked, this hierarchy was easy to understand. After all, our entire paternalistic society supported this notion of the dominance of men. Women fainted into men’s arms, wives took their husband’s names, girl cops could never shoot as straight as the men (and they always held their guns as if they were afraid of them) and men always did the driving.
Fortunately, I got over it.
At the risk of sounding like my cynicism has overtaken my romantic side, I will say that as a grown-up I’ve met plenty of non-ditzy women, and I prefer them. I like women who can take care of themselves, and thankfully, that is the predominant social model among women in our society today. Of course we’re all vulnerable in one way or another, and it is comforting and reassuring to be able to let down our guard and to share our vulnerabilities with our loved ones, but it goes both ways — women towards men and men towards women. And as for chivalry, it too need not be a one-way street.
However, after watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s I was stuck with the feeling that Holly Golightly was personifying, and even glorifying, a model of the hip yet vulnerable female in need of protecting. Further, I had the feeling that this was being projected as a role model for women. This was a time when the nascent women’s movement was causing a stir among girls who were uncomfortable with the roles defined by the hyper-optimistic yet excruciatingly conformist post-war generation. So it was as if Holly Golightly were being held up as some kind of compromise — self assured, urbane, yet silly and in need of a strong man to make her whole.
But no, it wasn’t even that. Plenty of women played that kind of strong-yet-lesser-than-men role in that era, and they don’t bother me because I’m aware of the times in which they were made. The thinking wasn’t so much that women were lesser than men, just that they were different from men. We can see the folly in that thinking now, but at the time it was pretty much accepted.
So in fact, it wasn’t the politics of Holly Golightly that bothered me, it was her character. She annoyed me, plain and simple. What it comes down to is that a ditz is a ditz, whether it’s 1961 or 2003. Look at Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca — a cynic could probably find all kinds of gender-oriented complaints with that role. But not me! I fell for her so hard I still have the bruises. The same can be said for a dozen other B&W dames from bygone eras. Even if they were always in the passenger seat, or if they fainted at the sight of blood, or couldn’t shoot straight if their lives depended on it, none of them were air-heads.