I'm like cat here,a no-name slob.We belong to nobody,nobody belongs to us.We don't even belong to each other-HollyGolightly in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's

There are many reasons why I love ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ but the most important reason is that I identify myself a lot with Holy Goliaty.
Her free spiritedness, the loneliness, the need to escape to a faraway place, her joie de vivre, and lastly her love for Tiffany’s which translates to my love for shopping. And just like her, I’m ‘a wild thing that cannot be kept in a cage’.

Audrey Hepburn is the second reason I love Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She is so graceful and elegant that nowhere would you even remotely guess that she is an ‘escort’!
She brings about her an innocence and solitude that you would feel a compelling need to hold her in your arms and comfort her.

This is what Paul Varjack, the writer neighbor of Holy writes about her:
“There was once a very lovely, very frightened girl. She lived alone except for a nameless cat”. As simple as Holy appears, she comes with a complicated past, she was married to a Texas farmer when she was 15, she has a brother, Fred who is in the army and she sees the ‘mean reds’ sometimes.
Paul is both intrigued and fascinated by her and Holy mistakes his protectiveness as a brotherly affection and addresses him as ‘Fred’.
While Holy searches for a rich husband for herself among what she calls as ‘rats and super rats’, Paul is a paramour of a rich woman, ‘2E’.
Paul and Holy connect in the vast loneliness of New York City and have fun ‘shopping’ at Tiffany’s or stealing masks at the dime store.

The movie is as much about escapism as it is about free-spiritedness.
Holy refuses to name her cat or decorate her apartment in the hope of marrying someone rich. She is as melancholic on the inside as she is cheerful outside. Paul sponges off of a rich woman in order to maintain his poor publishing record.
This hypocrisy is what brings them together.

Another iconic statement of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is the stylish and sophisticated look that Audrey brought to the silver screen. There are many signature statements of Audrey – the long cigarette lighter, her black Givenchy gown are only two important ones.

Of course, I cannot help but mention that Truman Capote (the writer of the novella on which the movie is based on) had wanted Marilyn Monroe to act in it and felt ‘cheated’ by Paramount Pictures. I initially thought that maybe Marilyn wouldn’t do justice to this role, but one never knows. She might given the movie a different perspective altogether!


On a cold winter night, when you cannot go out because of snow, try to catch this on TCM or better still on Netflix , because this bitter-sweet story will make you want to wrap yourself in a blanket and reach out for a cup of coffee.