Breakfast at Tiffany's

Capote's novella comes to glorious if slightly sentimentalized onscreen life with Hepburn gamboling through the film as the fey, ever-charming Holly Golightly. Peppard, never again quite so appealing, is Paul, the upstairs neighbor both intrigued and puzzled by Holly's erratic behavior: throwing all-night bashes for dozens of friends one moment, a lonely neurotic the next. Also mysterious are her visits to an imprisoned ganglord (Alan Reed) and to nightclub powder rooms, from which she emerges with $50 in cash each time. Paul, too, has a puzzling relationship with a wealthy woman (Neal) which prevents his growing love for Holly from flowering. Finally, though, answers come in the form of Doc (Ebsen), a visitor from rural Texas who reveals some of the truth behind Holly's surface sophistication.

The film is well cast, with the exception of Rooney as a Japanese neighbor--a racist grotesque--driven to frenzy by Holly's noisy soirees. Balsam, as Holly's agent, offers a significant insight into his client's personality midway through the film when he notes: "She's a phony, all right, but a real phony." Amusingly helmed by director Edwards, romantic to the nth degree, and likely to disappoint only those devoted to Capote's novel, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S is one of the great New York films, swathing the city in a layers of dewy love and glossy chic. The song, "Moon River," memorably crooned by Hepburn, won an Oscar and went on to become a popular favorite.

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