What about Breakfast At Tiffany's?

Film  Tonight I had the privilege of watching the version of Breakfast at Tiffany's broadcast on Boxing Day last year on Channel 5 at 9:05 in the morning. Yes, 5 broadcast a PG rated romance between a call girl and gigolo at breakfast time with these sponsorship buffers no less:

But what was interesting about this broadcast was that Channel 5 took the decision to remove all the scenes featuring Mickey Rooney's yellow faced turn as Holly's neighbour Yunioshi. As expected, the usual people were quite cross about this.  Apologies for this Daily Mail link.

In the thorough retelling of the making of the film, "Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman", author Sam Wasson interviews the producers of the film who talk about how they pleased with director Blake Edwards to remove the scenes.

But they were in New York, he was in LA and the director who'd been friends with Rooney for years was adamant that they stay in, despite test screenings indicating that audiences found those scenes uncomfortable and didn't laugh at all. 

The producers did get Edwards to shoot two versions of the one scene in which Holly and Yunioshi properly interact, one with Rooney, one without with a view to cutting him out completely from the finished film. He was not, which Edwards later regretted. 

Rooney for his part said just before he died that he shouldn't have done it. 

So what's Tiffany's like without the yellow face? Blissful and if you were showing this version of the film to someone as their first go around they would not have known that anything was missing. Whoever prepared this was immensely sympathetic. 

Mostly the removals are achieved through dissolves as in the opening scenes when Yunioshi complains about Holly pushing his buzzer to let him in and she's followed by one of her clients from the evening. Instead of her placating him, it dissolves to Paul arriving in the taxi. 

Of course, this does have the knock on effect of removing Holly's first proper appearance so the first chance we really get to see her is when Paul calls on her as he arrives in the building to use the telephone. He's much more of a viewpoint character into her world. 

Yunoshi is still a ghostly presence. He's mentioned a few times, notably when he calls the police at the party. When Paul goes to answer the phone, we see him hear the ring, cut to eyepatch joke, then cut back to him putting the phone down. No information is lost. 

In the drunk staircase scene, we cut directly from the moment Holly falls onto Paul's shoulders to her complaining about being interrupted and it simply looks like she means by herself rather than the cutaway to her upstairs neighbour from above. It works just as well. 

Tiffany's has always been an uncomfortable watch for me because of these scenes. Much as I loved the film, and I do love the film, I've said before I would give anything to be Holly Golightly in those opening scenes, I haven't gone back to it because of them. 

So what you lose from some of Holly's jokes, you gain from not having to deal with this racist stereotype stinking up the place, whose presence disrupting the tone of the film, outweighs actually how much screen time he has. Removing him matters not a jot. 

Ethically, of course, all of this is quite dodgy. Few of the original creators are still around to sign off on it and if should never replace the theatrical cut, which is an artefact of its time and beloved by many as is. 

But as an alternative version for those of us who're pulled out of the atmosphere of the story whenever Rooney's bucktooth caricature blunders through, it's dynamite. 

And if this was how some kids were introduced to the film that Boxing Day morning, well fine.