Every so often (usually when something has gone wrong), I do a little rendition of Audrey Hepburne in the final scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's: one hand clutched to my chest and the other stretched out in front of me, swaying slightly, I yell "Cat? Cat!" with a faraway look in my eyes. With the swaying and all, I probably look drunk, and so no one really gets it. What I am trying to say is that I feel pummelled by life and to try to settle the world beneath me I sometimes act in cryptic ways. In future, perhaps it's best just to say that. Or even to not act unusually.
I like Breakfast at Tiffany's. But something about that final scene has always bothered me. Burrowing into Gregory Peck's arms seems as much of a reaction of fear as her other behaviours. Holly Golightly hasn't decided to trust the man; she's just using him. One day soon, I imagine, she's going to up and leave the man for some exotic white beach where she'll find some other man who wants to tame the wild thing.
All of this is clearer in the book. Miss Golightly is not the soft, fragile, damaged thing she is as Miss Hepburne; she's a mean-ass wildcat, vindicative, snobbish, deeply cynical. She is not soft and fragile, though she might be damaged. But she is damaged by nature, not by circumstance. She sees too much, feels too much, understands too much. She's smart. And not incidentally, like Miss Hepburne.
At the end of the book, there is no sobbing in Mr Peck's arms and Cat stays lost. Lost from Miss Golightly that is, because he finds himself a home, hopefully one where he has a name. The moral is that Miss Golightly and Cat did belong to each other; she just couldn't see it. But by the same token, she never belonged to Mr Peck. He was just another man who wandered in and then out of her life. He wanted to tame her, like the others, not to have each belong to the other. So she leaves him. And she leaves New York.
Someone once told me that the short story represents the ephemeral nature of relationships (I'm not sure if this is a necessary qualification but here goes) in New York. I agree with this - to a point. Because there is a true moment of self-awareness in the short story; one that shows up the last scene of the movie as fluff, as more of the same. Miss Golightly realises that although most relationships are ephemeral, some are more solid. Sometimes, two people really can belong to each other. We're all searching for that, I think, and that is when we accept ephemeral relationships as more solid ones. The movie perpetuates that very mistake.
Both endings, seen in this light, are bitter-sweet, for inverse reasons. Each throws the other into relief. They belong together.
