Something/Someone Old

My Something Old today is Breakfast at Tiffany's (the movie, not the book). I watched a documentary on Audrey Hepburn a few days ago, and her performance of "Moon River" has been on my mind like an earworm ever since. Maybe writing about it here will exorcise it.

Ordinarily, I'd re-watch whatever movie or tv show was creating the earworm in an attempt to get it out of my system, but I've promised myself never to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's again. Beautifully filmed, beautifully acted, perfectly scored, perfectly written--and one of the most gut-wrenching movies I've ever seen, despite having (as I recall) no blood or gore, no violence other than one punch (I think?). I don't even remember any obscenities. All the dark impact of this movie is psychological or interpersonal.

Truman Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play his Holly Golightly, and I think she would have done an incredible job, since it was simply another, darker variant on the characters she played in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like it Hot--the beautiful girl from the wrong side of the tracks who gets damaged by the sexual politics and economics of America.

But you won't find me in the tiny minority (which included Capote) that thinks Audrey Hepburn was miscast. She brought a different kind of poignancy to Holly Golightly than Monroe would. I am certainly not suggesting that Marilyn Monroe was herself stupid, but even her cleverest characters (like Lorelei Lee) lack wisdom; the sharpest of them are just sharp enough to cut themselves. Hepburn's Golightly has all the intelligence and wisdom that Hepburn herself, according to those who knew her, possessed. Which makes the emotional impact of the film harsher. Hepburn's Golightly knows exactly how she's trapped; the psychological amputation she performs on herself, allowing herself to make no affectionate attachments whatsoever, she makes in response to an insoluble situation. Great writing, great filming, great acting--awful story.

Apparently Blake Edwards did this movie. It's really hard for me to believe, since I know him from the Pink Panther movies. What a tour de force for him as well!

Something New

So here's the documentary that got me started on Breakfast at Tiffany's
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Apparently, there are archives of Audrey Hepburn recounting her life on tape that they use as one of the film's major sources. It's just audio, and I don't know if it was responses to an interview, or to a series of interviews, or if it was just her way of keeping a journal. This is a good documentary, and I learned a lot. I had no idea Hepburn's parents were strong supporters of Nazi Germany, nor that she spent her teenage years in hiding in the Netherlands (there is apparently a book out about this called Dutch Girl, which I must read). I guess at some point her mother must have changed her mind about the Nazis, given that Audrey ended up doing some fairly dangerous work for the Dutch Resistance, including delivering a message to an Allied pilot who had parachuted in behind enemy lines. In later life, she did a great deal for UNICEF. I wish there had been more detail about that in the movie.

I also didn't know that she never wanted to be an actress: she wanted to be a dancer, a prima ballerina. That dream was ended by World War II. She suffered so much hunger that, along with all the other young people in Holland at the time, she was medically malnourished, which put her behind her peers. Also, it was impossible for her to continue her dance training once Holland was under Nazi Occupation. Both of those things ended her dream of being a prima ballerina, but she clearly kept some of her skills; I guess her being, first and foremost, a dancer explains how she could be cast to dance with Fred Astaire in Funny Face!

I found this documentary sad, though not as gut-wrenching as the fictional Holly Golightly's trajectory. So often it seems that the loveliest, kindest people, the sort who make almost everybody love them, are the ones who end up marrying people who can't love them well--or sometimes at all. It does seem that her first marriage to Mel Ferrer was a happy one, and an artistically collaborative one, for about ten years. The documentary was not clear on what went wrong, but apparently they drifted apart, and eventually were so distant from one another that they got a divorce.

Afterwards, she got married to an Italian psychiatrist who was a real piece of work; I'm not monogamous myself, but cheating on someone is still crappy, and he did a lot of it, having been photographed with upwards of 100 different women while he was married to Hepburn. What made it still more crappy is that Hepburn was a famous woman living in Italy, and the scandal of her husband's infidelities attracted the attention of the paparazzi, who harassed Hepburn almost beyond endurance. In her "archives," she talked about how she couldn't take her little boy to the park, or even out on the terrace, for fear of the photographers.

So, it's more than a little sad that this woman, who, according to just about everyone who knew her, was a lovely and loving person--albeit very private--couldn't find the love she wished for above all else. Her father, in my estimation, was a class-A asshole, so that may have had something to do with it. It's hard to move beyond our pasts.

Something Borrowed

I had no idea that "Respect" was an Otis Redding song:

Somehow, that makes Aretha Franklin's version even better, since it's like she's answering him! Franklin also changed the story of the song from "I don't care if you see other people while I'm not around, but if I *am* here, treat me right," to "I'm not seeing anybody on the side while you're gone; YOU treat ME with some respect when you get home:" respect both in the sense of basic human respect and the attentions a husband ought to pay a wife. In other words, "Take care of TCB."

The cover earned Franklin two Grammy Awards in 1968: "Best Rhythm & Blues Recording" and "Best Rhythm & Blues Solo Vocal Performance, Female."

Something Blue

The Bee Gees did this song in the 90s, long after I lost track of them. It was dedicated to the children of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The more I find out about them, the more I feel like these were pretty good guys. Are, in the case of Barry Gibb.

"There but for the grace of God go I." One of the best moral responses I've ever heard.

How are you all today?