Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Dom Robinson reviews

Breakfast at Tiffany’sDistributed by

Paramount

• Cert:
• Cat.no: PHE 8029
• Running time: 110 minutes
• Year: 1961
• Pressing: 2000
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 14 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround
• Languages: 5 languages available
• Subtitles: 15 languages available
• Widescreen: 1.78:1
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 9
• Price: £19.99
• Extras: Theatrical Trailer
  

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  Director:

  Blake Edwards

  (10, Blind Date, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Curse of the Pink Panther, Micki and Maude, The Pink Panther, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, The Return of the Pink Panther, The Revenge of the Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark,Son of the Pink Panther, Switch, The Trail of the Pink Panther, Victor/Victoria)

Producers:

Martin Jurow and Richard Shepherd

Screenplay:

George Axelrod (from the novel by Truman Capote)

Music:

Henry Mancini

Cast:

Holly Golightly: Audrey Hepburn
Paul Varjak: George Peppard
2-E: Patricia Neal
Doc Golightly: Buddy Ebsen
Mr Yunioshi: Mickey Rooney

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Moon River is wider than a smile..That’s all I ever learned from this film, a romantic comedy where its twoleads have an obsession with spending the first part of the day window-shoppingat a local jewellers, hence the title, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, whichis one of those romantic comedies your Mum likes.

Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is an independent woman and probablythe only one in the sixties who’s not off her head on experimental drugs andshagging till dawn. She’s due to marry Brazilian millionaire, but insteadfalls for her neighbour Paul Varjak (George Peppard, best known tome as Hannibal in The A-Team) .

Mickey Rooney also has a supporting role as the stereotyped Chineseneighbour. All his “l”s are “r”s and vice versa and he bumbles about morethan Closeau, which is of course exactly the way all Chinese people behave (!)

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The picture is terrible at best. Grainy as hell all the way through, what wereParamount thinking of allowing this past Quality Control? Bright scenesoccasionally get away with it to a degree, but darker and indoor scenes suffergreatly. The only saving grace is that it’s in 16:9 widescreen and anamorphic.The average bitrate is a surprisingly high 7.87Mb/s, often peaking over 9Mb/s,although I can’t think why.

The remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, in English only, doesn’t make agreat deal of difference. Dialogue is clear, but fans of action SFX shouldseek elsewhere.

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Extras :

Just a two-and-a-half-minute Theatrical Trailer on which, unlike a lotof recent Paramount DVDs, is in anamorphic widescreen like the film and here,dare I say it, it often looks better than the film it’s advertising!

Just 14 chapters split up the 110 minutes which is not enough, although ourDVD is dual layer, unlike the Region 1’s single layer.

English dialogue is in Dolby Digital 5.1, with French, German, Italian andSpanish being in surround only. Subtitles are available in English (and hardof hearing), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian,Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

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Despite being revered by the older generation, the film didn’t do it for meand the presentation is generally quite appalling. Someday, someone mayrelease a special edition. Well, they can’t leave this release on the shelvestoo long as it doesn’t do the content much justice.

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALLReview copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2000.