Meaning Behind Holly Golightly's Sunglasses in Breakfast at Tiffany's

Third and final video essay for the University of Oregon's Hollywood Film Style course.

Here is my subpar Statement of Intent for the video:

For this final video essay, I focused on a character’s motifs as room for causality in director Blake Edwards’ 1961 film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I wanted to zero in on how the protagonist, Holly Golightly (played by Audrey Hepburn), is seen wearing sunglasses many times throughout the movie until the very end, where she does not. When watching the film, I noticed that Holly wears the sunglasses as a way to hide her emotions and create a physical barrier between herself and the world. However, as George Peppard’s character Paul Varjak proves, Holly is able to rid herself of that barrier as they fall in love.
There are nine times where Holly is wearing her sunglasses, but in the video essay, I wanted to prove how the sunglasses are used as a crutch to hide behind. I broke down different segments of the film where Holly is wearing her sunglasses and where she is not, revealing her inevitable tossing of the sunglasses. As for the reading, I wanted to focus on how these sunglasses informed the causality of Paul and Holly’s eventual love in the film, specifically through author David Bordwell’s “Story Causality and Motivation” chapter in The Classical Hollywood Style. I used the quotes of, “Action is usually the outward expression of inner feelings,” “Hollywood cinema reinforces the individuality and consistency of each character by means of recurrent motifs. A character will be tagged with a detail of speech or behavior that defines a major trait,” and “...motif serves to mark significant stages in story action,” all to further prove my point that Holly’s recurring motif of her sunglasses reveals that her character is guarded, but becomes open to Paul (15).
I think while Holly’s sunglasses are a classic Hollywood staple of fashion and of Audrey Hepburn herself (as she wears many sunglasses in many of her films), it is important to note how the director uses the glasses to motivate her character into hiding and eventually into opening up. It gives the audience a hint that Holly is not as open as she may seem, as she spills her whole life to Paul from the beginning, but in reality, she was not telling him about her deeper secrets (like being someone else’s wife in a small town far away). I think this motif shows viewers that one cannot bottle up all of their feelings and expect to never release any of it, as Holly eventually lets herself falls in love with Paul instead of bottling it up.

WORKS CITED

Bordwell, David. “Story Causality and Motivation.” The Classical Hollywood Style, Taylor & Francis Group, 1985.
Edwards, Blake, director. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Jurow-Shepard.

Video Essay by Olivia Rae Decklar

Видео Meaning Behind Holly Golightly's Sunglasses in Breakfast at Tiffany's канала Olivia Rae Decklar