BREAKING AWAY

BREAKING AWAY

SPOILER ALERT

Even though American Graffiti is probably the most widely known teen movie from the 1970s, the story takes place in the early 60s, so I chose to focus on Breaking Away instead.  Though it had a small budget, was shot on location in Bloomington, Indiana, and offered a cast of primarily unknown actors, the film was so good that it was nominated for five academy awards, won for Best Original Screen Play and earned a Golden Globe for Best Film.  Since that time, many members of the cast have enjoyed successful careers in the film industry and in 2006 the movie was voted eighth out of the top 100 Most Inspirational Films of all time.

The story is about Dave Stohler (Dennis Christopher) and his three best friends Cyril (Daniel Stern), Mike (Dennis Quaid), and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley).  Although the nineteen-year-olds live in the town that is home to Indiana University, they feel no kinship with the college, which is a large part of the problem.  It is the second summer since they graduated from high school, and none of them has made plans for the future.  Dave, a rather spoiled only child, lives at home with his parents, Evelyn (Barbara Barrie) and Ray (Paul Dooley).  He spends all his time competing in bicycle races, training on the expensive Italian bike that he won in a competition, and hanging out with his buddies.  Since winning the bike, he has become obsessed with everything Italian; he speaks with an Italian accent, lectures his parents on how they should be more like an Italian family, and drives his father crazy by playing Italian Opera on the record player in his bedroom which is plastered with posters of the Cinzano Italian Cycling Team.

Cyril is a laid-back guy with a sarcastic sense of humor.  His tall gangly frame was perfect for playing basketball in high school and he had expected to get a college scholarship.  Since that fell through, all he wants to do is hang out with his friends and screw up everything he attempts because his father loves to be understanding when Cyril fails.  For example, he is contemplating taking the college entrance exam and flunking it as a gift for his dad’s birthday.  

Mike, who was also a jock in high school, still has a big chip on his shoulder due to the attention he enjoyed as a football player.  He is easily angered because he has little to look forward to.  Next to showing off his athletic prowess, Mike’s favorite pastimes are fighting, especially with guys from the college who make him feel like a loser, and trying to start smoking.  He constantly carries a cigarette pack in the sleeve of his tee shirt but can’t bring himself light up because he feels like he’ still in training.

Moocher actually has plans but pretends not to because he doesn’t want to seem disloyal to his pals.  He says that he and his girlfriend Nancy (Amy Wright) have broken up and that he lives alone because his dad found work in Chicago and his parents left him behind when they moved.  In reality, Moocher and Nancy are getting married, and he’s only sticking around until the family’s house sells. After that, he and Nancy are following his mom and dad to Chicago where there is a job already waiting for him.

The movie opens at a defunct limestone quarry where the four friends go to swim and talk about their lackluster lives.  Although the boys are close, there is tension between them, especially when it comes to Mike who plays childish pranks and intentionally stirs up arguments.  When their get together breaks up, Dave goes home to eat dinner with his parents.  Dave’s dad is old school, and although he suffers from heart problems, he resents the fresh vegetables his wife serves him for dinner instead of the French fries he craves.  He also complains constantly about his son’s Italian accent, which he calls Itie talking, and the Linguini and Tortellini his son enjoys eating, that he labels Eenie food.  What concerns Ray more than his son’s inexplicable tastes, however, is the boy’s lack of ambition.  Ray owns a small used car lot now, but when he was Dave’s age, he was a stonecutter at the Quarry, a position the IU students sarcastically refer to as a Cutter, and came home from work every night exhausted but proud of his achievements.  In his opinion, Dave won’t accomplish anything until he also has a job that wears him out.  Evelyn, on the other hand, lives in the here and now and realizes that things have changed since they were young.  She believes (correctly) that a better diet will benefit her husband’s health and that education is what their son needs to guarantee his future.  In short, she hopes that Ray will listen to her and that Dave will go to college. 

One day the four friends drive onto the college campus, and while watching the students play frisbee   opine that they can’t attend IU because they aren’t rich and don’t have bright futures.  They realize that although they will get older, the students will always be young because new ones come every year.  Mike further bemoans the fact that he is called a Cutter as an insult, when from his point of view, it’s just something else he never got to be.  As the boys are talking, Dave sees a pretty coed (Robyn Douglas) drop a notebook when she rides away on her moped.  He jumps out of the car and grabs his bike, picks up the booklet, and chases her down.  He finally catches up to her, and speaking in an Italian accent, introduces himself as Enrico, an exchange student from Italy.  She tells him her name is Katherine, and he charms her by calling her Katarina.  Even though the encounter is short, Dave immediately falls for the girl and as soon as he gets home, he orders a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to her at the dorm.  Unfortunately, his new love already has a boyfriend, a star on the university’s swim team named Rod (Hart Buchner) who hates the local citizenry even more than he loves himself.

A couple of evenings later Dave goes to Katherine’s dorm to serenade her with the aria M'appari tutt'amor from the opera Martha and brings Cyril along to accompany him on the guitar.  Katherine is so touched by the gesture that she comes outside to thank him, and they wander away to be alone.  In the meantime, Katherine’s sorority sister Suzy (PJ Soles) calls Rod, and he and his teammates come over to teach Dave a lesson; since he isn’t there, they beat up Cyril instead.  When Mike and Moocher see Cyril’s face, Mike demands to know who hit him.  Since Cyril doesn’t know who Rod is, he can only describe the vehicle the guys were in.  The three of them drive around the campus until they see the car parked in front of a pizzeria/bowling alley.  They go inside and Mike immediately zeros in on Rod with whom he’s tangled before.  Looking for an excuse to start a fight with his nemesis, Mike asks Cyril if Rod was the person that hit him.  Not wanting Mike to get into trouble, however, Cyril replies no.  Mike goes after Rod anyway and soon he, Cyril, and Moocher are in a fight with the entire IU Swim team.  Someone calls the police and Mike’s brother, who is a cop, shows up and arrests everyone. 

When the judge learns how disrespectfully the college students treat the local kids, he orders that a team of “townies” be allowed to compete in the upcoming Little 500, a bicycle race that is IU’s version of the Indy 500.  The three friends readily accept the invitation, thinking that they can’t lose with Dave on their team.  Dave doesn’t want Katherine to find out he’s been lying to her, however, and refuses to participate.  Since the quarry is where they always go to work things out, the friends head there, but are interrupted when a large group of students, including Rod and Katherine, arrive.  Mike climbs the highest rock and dives in, symbolically challenging Rod to a contest.  Rod takes him up on the dare and wins easily.  Unwilling to accept defeat, however, Mike continues to swim, hits his head on a boulder, and starts to drown.  Although Rod is close enough to save him, he passively watches as Cyril, Moocher, and Dave come to their friend’s aide.      

Dave finds out the Cinzano cyclists are coming to Indianapolis and starts practicing harder than ever, but Ray, who fears that his son is not smart enough to go to college or motivated enough to earn a living, see his son’s obsession as frivolous and tells Evelyn that he thinks Dave will end up “an Italian bum.”  She, in turn, suggests that he hire their son to help out at the lot.  Ray does as she suggests, but doesn’t trust his son to sell cars, so he puts him to work as a shine boy.  Unfortunately, he fails to notice that his “lazy” son, continues to train even though the job exhausts him.   When the day of the race comes, and Dave easily keeps up with the Italian team, he thinks they will see him as being good enough to ride with them.  Instead, one of them jams a stick under his fender, causing him to fall and destroy his bike. 

The cyclist’s dishonesty leads Dave to conclude that everybody cheats, including himself.  To make things right, he goes to Katherine and tells her that he is neither Italian nor a student which destroys any chance he has with her.  Then he goes home and begins ripping the posters off his bedroom walls.  Ray is shaken when he sees his normally happy son so angry and realizes it is time to step in.  He takes Dave to the campus, explains that the buildings were made from stone that he cut, and describes how hurt he was to discover that he didn’t feel welcome in a place he had helped build. Ray’s revelation encourages Dave to confide as well, and he admits that he took the college entrance exam, but although he did well, he feels more comfortable remaining a Cutter.  In response, Ray points out that cutters are people who work at quarries, meaning that Dave never was and will never be one. 

What Dave really fears is that going to college will ruin his relationship with his friends, but he is overlooking the fact that they didn’t abandon him when he took up competitive racing.   In fact, they are so anxious to have him lead their team in the Little 500 that they find an old bike and give it to him to fix up.  At first, Dave refuses, but once he starts working on the bicycle, he decides that he is actually anxious to ride, especially after his parents give the team tee shirts with the name Cutters emblazoned across the front. 

When the race begins, Dave goes first and soon is far out in front.  Ray, who has feigned disinterest by going to work, turns on the radio, and upon hearing that his son out is in front, heads to the track.  Unfortunately, before he can get there another rider runs into Dave, injuring him badly and leaving it up to his teammates to finish.  Since Mike is supposed to be the athlete of the group, Cyril and Moocher look to him to take over, but he refuses.  Unwilling to give up, Moocher, who is the smallest, takes Dave’s place.  He quickly loses the lead, so Cyril takes over, but falls even further behind.  As Mike stands on the sidelines looking on, Rod heckles him, insinuating that he is a loser.  Seeing the race as a way to prove once and for all that he is the better man, Mike grabs the bike from Cyril and joins the other cyclists.  Rod easily pulls ahead, however, and bests Mike once again.  Finally, seeing that the Cutters are going to lose without him, Dave has his teammates tape his feet to the bike’s pedals and reenters the race.  He swiftly catches up to and then passes Rod, winning the trophy and making his father proud of him at last. 

At the story’s end it is Autumn and Ray is riding a bike across the IU campus.   Up ahead, he sees his son, who has begun attending classes, chatting up a pretty exchange student from Paris (Lisa Shure).  As he passes by, he hears Dave tell her that he’s considering riding in the Tour de France.

Although Breaking Away can be interpreted as a warning about what happens when kids don’t take their futures seriously, it can also be seen as a portrayal of the impact a change in the labor market can have on a society.  Prior to the 1950s, governments and other institutions wanted their buildings constructed from Indiana limestone, considered by many to be the best in the world, and those who worked at the quarries were well paid and believed they had job security.  Then in the second half of the twentieth century, architects began to design structures made from glass and steel, which were both easier to acquire and less expensive to work with.  As a result, the quarries became little more than ugly holes in the ground, and the people who had been employed there suddenly found themselves out of work and poorly suited to do anything else. 

More than creating a local tragedy, however, the death of the quarries heralded a transformation in the very nature of work as blue-collar jobs in manual fields were replaced by white-collar positions in the professional, technological, and service industries.  This shift had a powerful influence on the American population because many people not only had to relocate for employment, but also needed to acquire additional education in order to perform new and much different tasks.  This in turned altered the educational system that not only had to begin teaching new fields, but also needed to offer options like evening classes, part-time schedules, and child-care to accommodate older non-traditional students seeking to be re-trained.   

 The movie acts as a metaphor for these issues in a number of ways.  The opening scene takes place at a quarry that went from providing incomes for local families to being little more than a swimming hole for people with few prospects.  Dave’s parents depict the labor market, with Ray representing the blue-collar manual trades of the past and Evelyn standing for the white collar professional and service positions of the future.  The battle between the townies and the students speaks to the incompatibility that developed between the two markets, the city’s residents being those that were left behind and the college representing those who are looking forward.  Lastly, the finale suggests that the outcome does not have to be bleak.  Ray, who felt the school had rejected him, reclaims his right to enjoy the campus, and Evelyn, heavily pregnant, carries a child who will be part of the new social milieu.

Breaking Away is a delightful movie that has a rating of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.  It is streaming on a number of online services including redbox, Amazon Prime, Fandango and Appletv and is well worth the three or four bucks it’ll cost you to rent it.  If you are one of those people that has to own a move, on the other hand, the DVD can be purchased for $5 to $10 from places like Best Buy and Walmart.   Next time I am going to look at the 1990s teen film Can’t Hardly Wait and see what the writers had to say about that decade.  Until then, if you will just watch flicks about anything OTHER than pandemics everything will be copacetic.