Cinema
Nice to Have Around
By ISABEL QUIGLY
Breakfast at Tiffany's. (Plaza.) —Fanfare and Dense Macabre. (Curzon.) Breakfast at Tiffany's (direc- tor: Blake Edwards; `A' certifi- cate) has two heroines, Audrey Hepburn and New York. And I imagine it loses a lot when its audience can't respond to the nostalgic feeling it is meant to arouse for this or that place or atmosphere or character. Much of its attraction depends on the power of names to conjure up feelings, on glimpses and hints of this and that to exert a madeleine-like influence on its audience; and so if the audience doesn't follow the hints and glimpses, and doesn't feel a rosy glow of familiarity at the sight of particular buildings, shops or streets, everything falls a bit flat: it is like listening to jokes in a language you can't quite follow.
Which leaves, since there isn't a great deal more, Audrey Hepburn. In the past her films have tended to lean pretty heavily on her charm. Imagine Roman Holiday or Love in the After- noon or The Nun's Story without her. Breakfast at Tiffany's is no exception: from start to finish she carries it, not because she is a great actress in comedy but because she is a great charmer, everlastingly nice to have around. The part, indeed, seems an unlikely one for someone who was to my mind the perfect Natasha. She gives a comic interpretation of the sort of character who is played straight by Joanne Woodward, the wild girl from some Southern backwoods, dryad and demon; but as seen by Audrey Hepburn she is a beautiful spoof of all beautiful model girls, with two-foot-long cigarette holder, dark glasses, and nonsense clothes. And of course an unrssailable innocence—a vital part of the fictional prosti- tute's makeup.
Breakfast at Tiffany's is good fun rather than good comedy! Truman Capote's story is full of engaging maniacs and has some splendid set- pieces, but no one seems to have decided quite what the mood is, how frivolous, how fantastical, how heartfelt; the film swoops in and out of particular kinds of sentiment and rather discon- certing changes of emotional weather. There are moments of neat direction and many good but over-emphatic jokes, such as the cry of 'Timber' when an enormously long model girl passes out at a party, or the gadgets used by tycoons for simple operations like sleeping and talking on the telephone. Martin Balsam, one of Holly- wood's best supporting actors (usually so mild and quiet), is excellent as the tycoon; but Mickey Rooney as a Japanese photographer is an artistic excrescence. The hero, George Peppard, is too much like too many other heroes to be remarked upon. As mildly sophisticated entertainment, recommended.
The international programme at the Curzon is a worthy effort but a leaden one. Comedy from Holland, tragedy from Hungary, both, though quite dissimilar, suffer from the same inability to say anything less than four times over.
The comedy, Fanfare ('U' certificate), is made by Bert Haanstra, known in this country for his short documentary Class, which keeps turning up on television and at the Mermaid lunchtime shows; a clever and memorable little film in which objects like milk bottles and beer bottles are treated with wit and stylishness. So the thought of a feature film by Haanstra sounded promising. Alas for promise : Fanfare is a neo-Ealing effort of gruesome whimsicality with every ingredient that could possibly be called 'delightful,' about two rival bands in a village full of canals. From gaffers, cows, clogs, musical instruments, splashes in the water and bumps in the night every possible and impossible joke is squeezed, then repeated again and again. The obvious thing about Haanstra is that he is hopeless with people : not a soul in the film but has one cringing with embarrassment.
Danse Macabre (director: Laszlo Ranody; 'A' certificate) is pne of those pieces of popular social realism in which a block of flats is sliced down the middle to reveal a perfect cross-section of society. There is the sweet young thing, and the farouche sad boy who adores her, and the sweet young thing's friend, and mother, and boy- friend, and the bored ageing matron having an affair with a youth who calls at the house do a motor-bike, and the absent-minded scientist, and the career woman, and the rich family with bridge parties, and the very poor family without, and an assortment of ancients, children, dogs, gossips, babies, etc. etc. A German grenade is found on an old bomb site and goes the rounds of dustbins and kids; finally blowing the (conveniently) right people to bits. As an essay in documentary realism it is at once ponderous and superficial; as an attempt to make tragedy out of misfortune it is extraordinarily inept. Every point is ham- mered home, repeated, ground in. Even as a picture of Hungarian life today it is too synthetic to be of any use.
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