DVD Review: Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) -- The Paramount Centennial Collection 2-Disc Edition

Fight the Mean Reds
With Holly Golightly On 1/13/09

"...she was most frequently associated with the free-spirited, unpredictable and inimitably stylish Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's... In the movie, when she says, 'I love New York,' you love it for all the magic she herself brings to the mythology of a great melting pot. Blake Edwards---one of the best filmmakers of the last fifty years-- understood this profoundly while making the picture. It's clear by the way he brings Hepburn into the film at the very beginning: an empty, early dawn Fifth Avenue; a single cab; a tall, striking, unmistakable figure fades in, the 'Moon River' theme playing with all the utter confidence of certain nostalgia. From start to finish, Edwards knew it: this was Heburn's picture, and he is never away from her for long."

-- Peter Bogdanovich
Who the Hell's In It (pg. 438-439)

And sure enough, much like the nameless cat that Golightly tracks down in the alleyways of New York (or rather Paramount's "New York" set that perished in 1983's horrific backlot fire) in the film's famous rainy romantic finale, whenever Hepburn's character isn't onscreen, the film suffers for it as viewers lean closer to the image, trying to find our favorite party girl in this 1961 classic.



While it's the most iconic of Hepburn's movies as seldom an issue of any major fashion magazine goes by without an homage to the over-sized sunglasses, string of pearls and amazing little black dress she wore like it was a second skin-- once joking in real life that Givenchy's wardrobe was her body armor since only in it she felt safe and protected-- upon closer inspection, it's one of those works that plays better in memory than it does in reality.



Based on Truman Capote's beloved novel by the same name which features a very different Golightly than the one personified by Hepburn and one that the author always envisioned being portrayed by Marilyn Monroe (upon whom, it was rumored he drew more than a little inspiration), it's a role that one immediately recalls as the definitive Audrey Hepburn performance but also a part with which the actress was never entirely comfortable.

As a new mother, Hepburn continually stated that "I always wonder if I risked enough on that one," as "I was nothing like" the southern child bride who runs away to New York and reinvents herself as a fashion chic escort hunting a rich husband. Saying that perhaps "I should have been a little more outrageous... I believed in good casting. And I'm still not sure about Holly and me," as is included in Paramount Centennial Collection's fact-filled booklet contained in the 2-disc set, nonetheless the studio adapted the film for her, dropping some aspects of the film's plot such as "a 'fling' with another woman," as 501 Must-See Movies notes (ed. Emma Beare, pg. 299).

Additionally adding a love story and making George Peppard's fellow prostitute (or "gigolo") straight and a romantic interest for Holly which differed from the book, as Blake Edwards notes on Disc 2 of the DVD, in the process of transferring the novella to the screen, Paramount and screenwriter George Axelrod made a very "big jump from the Capote Holly Golightly to our film's Holly Golightly."



Yet, it was perhaps this addition of Hepburn's natural grace and glamour that make the film so startling, especially when Buddy Ebsen's much older Doc arrives on the scene and informs both the aspiring writer/gigolo Paul (Peppard) and the audience of Holly's true origins as a barefoot child bride in the south.

Suddenly, our heart breaks even more as we realize how fragile Holly is despite her knowing facade and how dangerous it is for her to constantly push others away, not even wanting to grow close to her cat, by forming and abandoning attachments quickly with a series of people who use and abuse her-- all of which is perfectly articulated in Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer's Oscar winning song "Moon River" which has become nearly as famous as Givenchy's little black dress.



As Mancini memorably recalled, acknowledging that the work was specifically tailored to the actress, "no one else has ever understood it so completely. There have been more than a thousand versions of 'Moon River', but hers is unquestionably the greatest... To this day, no one has done it with more feeling or understanding... When we previewed the film, the head of Paramount was there, and he said, 'One thing's for sure. That f***ing song's gotta go." Audrey shot right up out of her chair! Mel Ferrer [Audrey's husband] had to put his hand on her arm to restrain her. That's the closest I have ever seen her come to losing control," as Hepburn's son Sean Hepburn Ferrer quoted in Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit (pg. 83-84).

While there are various versions of that story including one in which Hepburn argued "over my dead body," "Moon River" is the audibly heartbreaking pulse of the film, evidenced in the opening credits and echoing throughout but it's in an especially understated and unguarded moment when an unglamorous everyday Holly sings it on the fire escape that instantly makes one empathize with her plight.

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Although it's hard to watch the film by today's standards without cringing and wanting to fast-forward every single scene featuring the horribly racist and stereotypical portrayal by Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi, in trying to ensure cultural sensitivity and understanding, Paramount includes a valuable seventeen minute featurette called "Mr. Yunioshi: An Asian Perspective" which gives audiences an overview of the history of Asian Americans both onscreen and off-screen.



One of the four new featurettes included in the Paramount Centennial Collection which also dishes up all of the other featurettes from the 2006 release, including feature commentary from producer Richard Shepherd, "Audrey's Letter to Tiffany" and a short history of the jewelry store since 1837 in "Brilliance in a Blue Box," one of the other standouts was the new roughly twenty minute biographical portrait of composer Henry Mancini.

The legendary Oscar winner who collaborated with Edwards throughout his career on everything from Peter Gunn to Tiffany's to the Pink Panther movies, this time around we get an intimate view of the musician featuring interviews with his widow and children.

Also offering the 2006's informative "The Making of a Classic," which includes some incredibly candid confessions from Edwards as he notes that although he would've directed the film "if I had to crawl all the way up the walk of fame," that he's not sure he would've cast Peppard today and that he'd give anything to recast Rooney's Yunioshi. These comments come along with some humorous anecdotes about his invention of that famous cocktail party scene which paid off ultimately when he cast Peter Sellers in the equally politically incorrect yet hilarious film a few years later, aptly named The Party.

The fifth entry into Paramount's wondrously packaged double-disc sets included in their Centennial Collection and the fourth featuring Hepburn, following Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and Funny Face-- while it pales in comparison to the sparkling diamond that is Hepburn herself, it's been restored to a superior digital level, making this version a jewel for Hepburn devotees everywhere. And in celebration, check out this fan-made video honoring the film and star.

DVD Review: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) -- (2-Disc Special Edition)

Landing Onto DVD & Blu-ray 12/2/08

Imagine the strange paradox of a science fiction film about a UFO that "suppresses hysteria and defuses paranoia" and one that-- as author Peter Biskind continued in Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying & Love the Fifties-- produced a depiction wherein "Earth, not the alien culture, is dystopian," (156-157). Seems tough to imagine, doesn't it?

Well, like many of the allegorical genre films of the 1950s which dealt covertly with issues of conformity (12 Angry Men), teenage homosexuality (Rebel Without a Cause), the McCarthy era (High Noon) just to name a few, director Robert Wise's compelling science fiction classic, which was just listed this year as the fifth best film in the genre by the American Film Institute also had a subtextual message that went beyond the work serving as mere surface level entertainment.

Although it's been preserved as a "National Treasure" since 1995, originally, the film was based on the short fictional piece "Farewell to the Master" by Astounding Stories magazine writer Harry Bates. Adapted by anti-war, left-wing, Christian screenwriter Edmund H. North (Patton), director Robert Wise's film seemed to argue that "Earth (including the U.S.A.), far from being the last word in civilization, as centrists thought it was, exists in a state of virtual barbarism," (Biskind, 157).

Much like Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., the film's presentation of alien life isn't the monstrosities served up in Independence Day, but in this film, it arrives in the form of Klaatu, played by actor Michael Rennie."Surely the best behaved, most polite alien who ever hopped across hyperspace," as Biskind noted (151), Rennie's Klaatu arrives shortly into the film after his large flying saucer lands right in the heart of Washington D.C.'s mall. With the army drawing down on the saucer for two hours as nothing emerges, finally, instead of a three-eyed monster or blue martian (or "gray" rather as it was shot in black and white), we meet a handsome, well-spoken, and innocuous looking human with pleasing American diction whose opening line to the masses is that, "we have come to visit you in peace and with goodwill."

Of course, with that many eyes focused on the alien with adrenaline charged, itchy trigger fingers, somebody fires directly at Klaatu, and that's when we first set eyes on Gort, his nine foot metal encased "bodyguard" and fellow alien who disintegrates tanks and guns with a laser that emits from a small slit in his facial shield (take that Iron Man). Explaining that instead of a weapon, Klaatu had been hoping to deliver a gift to the American president in order to study life on other planets-- which is now decidedly moot given the gunfire-- he's later moved to Walter Reed Hospital as Gort retreats to the ship to wait.

Turning down an attempt to speak directly to the president alone, Klaatu's mission soon reveals itself as he says that he doesn't have time for the "petty squabbles of countries" and "childish jealousies" facing the globe in that era and needs to "explain [his peaceful message] to all the nations at the same time." Having traveled two hundred fifty million miles from a neighboring planet over the course of five months-- despite his patient demeanor, Klaatu isn't one to settle for any political posturing.

So, finally he checks himself out of the hospital and-- assimilating with the general public-- dons the decade's traditional "gray flannel suit" styled attire, dubbing himself Carpenter, and renting a room under the same roof as the widowed Mrs. Benson (Patricia Neal) and her inquisitive son Bobby. While hysteria floods the headlines of the local newspapers and radio announcements, "Mr. Carpenter" continues on his quest, with young Bobby as his guide as he searches for the wisest person he can find.

While it takes a good fifty-six minutes for us to step inside that famous flying saucer and Patricia Neal's unrealistic, overly neglectful single mother seems a bit too blase about handing her son off to a total stranger when there's "alien activity" about-- the film feels as Leonard Maltin noted "more timely than ever" (although last time I checked grammar it should be "timelier"). This is especially true given its important message of looking past country-lines to becoming united as a whole.

Featuring an exceptional and noteworthy score by frequent Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann (which makes excellent use of the genre's fondness for theremins, organs, and strange hums and whirs), the third act of this unusual and intelligent film feels nearly as though we're watching a silent movie as the score takes center stage and Gort becomes our dialogue-free guide.

While Klaatu's eventual resurrection once again and memorable message of peace (to warn against the end of the human race) has definitely left some to correctly interpret the film as subtly Christian, intriguingly, producer Julian Blaustein noted that the Christian angle from North was never discussed with the director or producer in the hopes that it would remain subliminal. However, when censors disagreed with Klaatu's ability to have "unlimited power over life and death," to appease the MPAA, a line was inserted that ultimately "the power of resurrection is reserved to the Almighty Spirit."

And while some have chosen to read into the parallels on that level, more than anything it's a remarkable allegorical left wing look at the troubles facing society after World War II. By giving audiences an alien whom we can relate to-- much like E.T. whose departure also makes us sad and promotes friendship and peace-- the film, which Biskind additionally argued seemed to project a "technological utopia" went against the grain of what was popular for its time.

Morally, in 1951, he noted that the film's "worst crime was not taking sides... lumping the United States together with the Soviet Union in its indictment of world politics. When Klaatu refused to meet alone with the American president, it was tantamount to treason," (pg. 158). While indeed reaction was mixed back in its initial release and aside from some second unit background material, the entire work was filmed on the sound-stages and back-lot of 20th Century Fox as its stars never set foot in the nation's capitol, in one of the DVD commentary tracks as filmmaker Wise speaks with director Nicholas Meyer, he said that the film's main priority was in sharing their stance "against armed conflict in the real world." Furthermore, according to Wise and Blaustein, their intention was "to promote a strong United Nations."

Releasing just in time for next week's hotly anticipated remake starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, which gets audiences psyched with a gripping seven minute sneak preview which precedes the film on disc 1, The Day the Earth Stood Still flies onto shelves in two-disc special editions for both DVD and Blu-ray owners.

Adding to the previous extras available in its past DVD release, viewers have the option of listening to the film in its original mono track (in English, Spanish, or French), English 5.1 Dolby Surround, or via one of two feature commentaries including one with Wise and Meyer and another with film historians along with an isolated score track to view it just with Herrmann's memorable soundtrack.

The second disc is divided into two fan-friendly menus of featurettes and galleries with the option to browse (via your remote) interactive pressbooks, extensive making-of and production photographs, as well as the film's entire shooting script from FADE IN to THE END.

On the featurette menu, there's a number of relatively short bonus documentaries including a brief teasing look at the "History of Flying Saucers" in six minutes, biographical profiles on short story author Harry Bates and the screenwriter Edmond North, a documentary short film, as well as a fascinating look at "Science Fiction as Metaphor" in a sixteen minute intriguing extra that puts the film into perspective with the communist scare, Korean war, spy fears, nuclear worries, and all of the other issues terrifying citizens during the '50s.

Honestly, it's one of the few classic science fiction works from that era that has remarkably lost none of its power and once again seems to be just as important as it was then. And while I can't speak for the new version of Earth-- for the genre at its finest and for some wonderful post-film discussion and food for thought, there's no beating Rennie's Klaatu in Robert Wise's brilliant original movie that Still stands above the rest.