Sometimes, the classic greats are still great. Like this one. While it definitely wasn't the greatest film ever made, it is one of the most fun and engaging light comedies, and it owes everything to Audrey Hepburn's solid performance as the naive, giggly, and somewhat sad Holly Golightly. I couldn't imagine any other actress of the time playing the role so well; it's as if it were written for her. And I couldn't imagine any of today's actresses pulling it off, so I hope nobody ever gets it into their head to remake this.

Holly Golightly is a young, hip New Yorker who irritates and energizes everyone around her. Her life plans are to either become an actress or marry royalty. She's dedicated to instant gratification; she parties nearly every night with a variety of men, and some of her exploits border on prostitution (I wonder if Capote was more serious in his novel: the frequent references to Holly taking money from her male friends on the way to the powder room sound suspiciously like a veiled reference to something that the Production Board wouldn't allow). She instantly makes herself at home with the new guy downstairs, a struggling writer played by George Peppard, who, thirty years later, would fight international terrorism with B.A., Murdoch, and Face. He thinks he's different from her, and looks down on her casual lifestyle. However, he is a kept man for a rich widow played by Patricia Neal, and there's not as much difference between them as he would like to think.

A surprise greets Peppard in the form of Buddy Ebsen, pre-Beverly Hillbillies, who turns up and informs him that Holly is actually married to him. Holly's just not cut out for committment, though, and she narrowly escapes going back to Tennessee (or wherever they lived, I forgot where) and returns to her partying.

In the meantime, she is paid several hundred dollars a week to visit a gangster in prison; she's either too naive or just doesn't care that she's actually running messages to his associates on the outside. This will soon complicate her life. She and Peppard become involved in a hesitant romance, which has problems because she's unwilling to commit to someone who's not rich. She becomes involved in some petty nobility from South America, and it looks like she finally has what she wants, even though she's in love with Peppard.

As I said, Hepburn carries the film. Peppard is fine, as are most of the rest of the cast, but it's Hepburn that makes it work. There is one horrible and embarrassingly bad piece of casting, though, that mars the film every time the character comes onscreen. Mickey Rooney plays Yunioshi, her Japanese upstairs neighbor who threatens to call the police every time she has a party. He plays the character as every hurtful and downright wrong stereotype of the Japanese that you could think of. It's sad that such a lighthearted and intelligent comedy had to turn to such lowbrow attempts at humor to appeal to the dimwits in the audience. I'm not in favor of censorship, so I wouldn't advise a re-edit, but if you are renting this film, you would do fine to fast forward through Rooney's parts.