Breakfast At Tiffany's is an outlier on this list, largely down to the fact that it stands strongly as an entity completely separate from the Truman Capote novella on which it is based. In fact, it's a fantastic film, and nobody's going to argue that it's a classic. As an adaptation, however, it falls short. Thanks to a complete reimagining of the Holly Golightly character, the film may as well have been based on a completely different book, and it's no wonder that Capote disapproved so strongly of it. He had envisioned Golightly as an untameable, impossible-to-hold-onto free spirit, and the book features no real hint of a love affair, instead ending somewhat morosely with her disappearing without a trace. While Hepburn's performance is undoubtedly iconic, it's a far cry from the Marilyn Monroe figure that was intended. Had Monroe not been under contract with 20th Century Fox at the time, Breakfast At Tiffany's might have been a wholly different film altogether.
