'Breakfast at Tiffany's' is painful to watch

The song "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by one-hit wonder Deep Blue Something has over 300 million listens on Spotify. The catchy tune describes a woman who rejects a man's attempts to begin a relationship because "we have nothing in common" only to be rebutted by the man's suggestion that "we both kinda liked" the 1961 film starring Audrey Hepburn. The song is now 30 years old, although it retains its charm. In contrast, the film is horribly dated and gut-wrenchingly painful to watch.

I think my chances of getting lung cancer doubled or tripled from the secondhand smoke I received just by watching this film. Seriously. Characters are going outside? Time to light a cigarette. Characters are going inside? Time to light a cigarette. Getting in a taxi? Cigarette. Getting out of a taxi? Cigarette. Standing around at a party? Cigarette. Waiting to go to dinner? Cigarette. The beautiful faces of this movie's stars, Hepburn (as Holly Golightly) and George Peppard (as Paul Varjak), are constantly shown with a cigarette between their lips or in their fingers. This movie couldn't have done more to glamourize smoking if it had been entirely funded by the tobacco industry.

And it's not just smoking. Drinking is glamourized as well. In one key scene, Paul relies on liquor to help him deal with a challenging conversation. In another scene, Paul and Holly drink wine early in the morning in the name of celebration. Holly gets drunk to deal with an emotionally distressing moment. At a party that soon devolves into a destructive, drunken revelry, liquor is the first thing on everyone's mind as they arrive. Liquor and tobacco are paired with attractive actors to portray them as emblems of sophistication.

The characters in this film repeatedly litter. Every cigarette is just dropped on the street, and other paper trash that they happen to have is just tossed away on camera like it's no big deal. The opening scene of the movie shows Holly putting some trash in a trash can, but after that there are repeated instances of littering.

Stealing is glamourized as a romantic thing to do when Paul and Holly have a day-long outing. They make a big show of inspecting items at a five-and-dime while exchanging knowing glances as suspenseful music plays. Then they don Halloween masks and run out of the store in a fit of giggles. This scene was cringe-inducing and I can't imagine it was every particularly funny, even in the 1960s. Holly also says that she shoplifts just for the fun of it.

Of course, the film is also incredibly materialistic. Holly's search for a wealthy man to marry is overall presented positively as a sort of liberation, contrasted with her much-older husband from whom she ran away. The scenes at Tiffany's show a sort of obsession with jewelry. While the most important piece of jewelry at the end of the film turns out to be a Cracker Jack ring, perhaps contrasting with the materialistic message that dominates the film, Holly's character seems to be entirely driven by a desire to make easy money rather than either finding true love or making something meaningful out of her own life. While she claims to be a wild spirit, Holly is hardly a strong female character; she depends on men and uses men to get money.

The characters are disrespectful to service workers. They are both rude to the taxi driver in the final scene. Additionally, they are rude in both library scenes and disrespect the librarians. This is especially egregious to me considering that Paul is a published author! Paul and Holly are more respectful with the salesman at Tiffany's, but only because they are making a sort of joke at his expense.

Finally, in the conclusion of the film, Holly dumps her cat out of a taxi on a random street in New York! What an outrageous thing to do! I don't even like cats and this totally upset me. Yes, she does go retrieve the cat, but I can't believe this was ever an acceptable action.

Mickey Rooney's yellowface portrayal of "Mr. Yunioshi" is incredibly offensive. Disfiguring his face, shouting incoherently in heavily-accented English, and bumbling about into lights and doors, Rooney acts as a ridiculous caricature that degrades Asian Americans. This topic has already been extensively discussed elsewhere, so I won't say any more. The scenes with Mr. Yunioshi were so painfully racist and provided no benefit whatsoever to the plot or the overall humor that they can only be classified as a huge blunder. Even in the 1960s, I can't imagine this character was not offensive to many people.

I did not enjoy this film. Aside from the issues mentioned above, another problem the film faced was that it tried to cram to many characters from the novella into a 2-hour run time. I have not read Capote's novella that is the basis for the film, but I expect it does a much better job of character development and includes way more background information. The film had to rush through some scenes that provided information that was important to the plot, such as when Doc Golightly arrives and meets with Paul or all the scenes about Paul's relationship with his "decorator" and sponsor. I felt that there was an attempt to include more details from the novella that weren't able to be fully developed in the film adaptation. However, to give credit where credit is due, I will say that the exposition wasn't overly heavy-handed and there was a solid effort to "show rather than tell."

Along these lines, I felt that a lot of the dialogue was rather stilted and unnatural. To me, all of the dialogue felt too scripted for natural conversation. The romantic dialogue felt like lines being read by actors rather than reflecting a genuine romance.

Finally, there's what to me is the fundamental problem of the plot, which is hardly unique to this film. Why is Paul so in love with Holly? She has no redeeming qualities. She works for the mafia, is constantly promiscuous, is motivated only by money (but spends entirely frivolously), is materialistic, can't cook, can't remember her key, etc. Hell, Paul is a professional writer and Holly says she has never been to the public library! The only thing she has going for herself is that she is attractive--and I must say, that won't last long with all the drinking and smoking she does! Sure, two attractive people falling for each other in a whirlwind romance is perfectly reasonable, but Paul seems ready to commit to marrying Holly at the end of the film, which is beyond what I can tolerate under suspension of disbelief.

In conclusion, I had a really hard time getting through this movie. I don't recommend it, even as a sort of window to the past. It's not very funny, it's not very romantic, and there's a lot of stuff that's just offensive or painful to watch.