Breakfast at Tiffany's
Short description
Breakfast at Tiffany's centres on Holly Golightly, a young woman in New York who lives on the surface of high society, moving through parties and changing her appearance while she looks for a wealthy man to marry. Into her building moves Paul Varjak, a writer who is kept by an older, richer woman and has yet to make his own name. What begins as friendship between two people who depend on others for money turns into something deeper, and Holly's past arrives to complicate it.
The film was directed by Blake Edwards, made second among the twenty-seven features he directed, following Operation Petticoat and preceding Experiment in Terror. George Axelrod wrote the screenplay, and Martin Jurow and Richard Shepherd produced it for Paramount. Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard play the leads, with Patricia Neal, Buddy Ebsen, Martin Balsam and José Luis de Vilallonga among the eighty-five credited cast.
It was released in October 1961 and runs 115 minutes. Against a budget of about 3 million dollars it took roughly 10 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.5 out of 10 from around 204,000 votes, on TMDB 7.6 from a few thousand, and a critics' rating of 7.6 from 100 reviews puts it broadly level with the audience response.
What's left behind the scenes
- A German postage stamp from 2001, whose design featured an image of Audrey Hepburn from "Breakfast at Tiffany's," has become a philatelic rarity and is worth over 50,000 euros.
- For her role in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Hepburn received $750,000, becoming the highest-paid actress in Hollywood at the time.
- In the film, Holly and Paul steal a pair of plastic Halloween masks from the "Five and Dime" store. Paul's mask is of the dog Huckleberry, supposedly a reference to the "huckleberry friend" from the song "Moon River".
- The role of Paul Varjak was offered to Steve McQueen, but he had to decline as he was busy filming "Wanted: Dead or Alive".
- The famous scene at the beginning of the film, where Audrey Hepburn walks alone along the deserted streets of New York and then approaches the "Tiffany's" store, was actually filmed under the observation of hundreds of onlookers. This irritated Hepburn, and she kept making mistakes, but eventually focused and the scene was shot.
- Initially, the lyrics of the song began like this: "I'm Holly, like I want to be / like Holly on a tree back home...". Although the film opens with this musical theme, the lyrics to the song are first heard in the scene where Paul "Fred" Varjak (played by George Peppard) discovers Holly Golightly (played by Audrey Hepburn) with a guitar in her hands, singing "Moon River" on a fire escape.
- Initially, John Frankenheimer was slated to direct the film, with Marilyn Monroe set to star in the lead role.
- The famous little black dress worn by Hepburn’s character in the film was created personally by Hubert de Givenchy.
- The Japanese company “Jun Planning” released a Holly Golightly doll.
- On December 4, 2006, the black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn's character was sold for $807,000 at a Christie's auction in London.
- The film is based on Truman Capote's novel "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1958).
- Audrey Hepburn admitted that the episode in which she throws a cat onto a dirty, rainy street was the most unpleasant for her in the entire film.
- The Tiffany's store was opened on a Sunday specifically for the film crew – this was the first time it had happened since the nineteenth century.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
