BREAKING AWAY

(July 1979, U.S.)

BREAKING AWAY will likley go down in cinematic history as a great, original coming-of-age film (and it damn-well is!). For myself, it was a film that came out during a time when rousing sports films were making it big on the screen. By the Summer of 1979, there had already been two ROCKY films for boxing, three BAD NEWS BEARS films for baseball, NORTH DALLAS FORTY and HEAVEN CAN WAIT for football and even BOBBY DEERFIELD for auto racing. BREAKING AWAY gave us bicycle racing and it left a guy like me cheering for more! Unfortunately, there was more in the form of a very short-lived TV series of the film in 1980 (it sucked!). Still, all these years later, my perspective for the film has matured a great deal in that I see a great deal of social meaning behind its content, and I'd like to share that with you now.

On the surface, this is a film about a young man named Dave Stoller from Bloomington, Indiana whose sole purpose in life is to excel in his bicycle riding. In a town filled with the everyday working class who are likely never to be educated beyond high school or ever leave their small town, Dave exemplifies himself through his physical skills and repeated victories in bicycle races. When he’s not in his own world on his bicycle, Dave is as ordinary as the friends he hangs out with at the local quarry’s watering hole where they go swimming every day. This freedom comes easily as they have all made the conscious decision to avoid getting a job in order to waste the rest of their lives together. Bloomington is also a college town where students of Indiana University reside. Unlike the local kids of the town, who are often referred to as “cutters” because they come from families of men whose traditional job it was to cut the limestone that would eventually constitute the buildings that went up on the campus, the college kids who are meant to spend only four years of their lives in Bloomington, are rich, spoiled, and known to make no secret of looking down their noses at the local “cutter” kids. As a “cutter” kid himself, Dave is often not entirely satisfied with his own identity and longs to become something more than just a local kid from the neighborhood with no job prospects and no college education. The spiritual freedom he feels on his bicycle only takes him so far, though, and he longs to be on a more equal level of the privileged college kids in town. To accomplish this, he decides to create an alternate ethnic identity for himself when he meets a beautiful college girl named Katherine. This is a persona he was already testing with his disapproving parents before meeting her, but one he’s chosen to commit himself to now once she unexpectedly enters his life. When he’s with her, he’s no longer the ordinary Dave Stoller, but rather a more colorful Italian exchange student with an alternate Italian name. This sudden switch in identity and character stems from his great love and admiration of Italian bicycle riders, particularly the team Cinzano. Although Dave hasn’t exactly propelled himself to the higher class level of the college kids with this alternate identity, he feels a greater sense of his own self as a fake Italian somebody rather than just a real life common American working class nobody. This newly-found confidence is just enough to make him feel comfortable sitting in a bowling alley café with Katherine that has normally been reserved for the college kids only. During an unexpected brawl involving his best friends, instead of stepping in to help them, he keeps himself well hidden so as not to expose his secret identity to the woman he loves. From Katherine’s perspective, the man she comes to know as the Italian exchange student, though not being financially well-off or of an upper class sector, is far more interesting than the typical college jocks with inflated egos she has spent most of her time with up until now.

During one of the film’s sports sequences, Dave takes part in a bicycle race alongside the Italian riding team Cinzano that he has come to idolize. From the Italian’s perspective, they, too, also sport an attitude that looks down not only on the common working class kids of Bloomington, Indiana, but apparently, also on Americans themselves. During the race, the Italian champions appear to be appalled and flabbergasted that a common American like Dave is not only able to keep up with them, but also has the audacity to speak Italian to them. While Dave’s social intentions are to extend his friendship and admiration, the Italian team react with anger and malicious intent when the cause Dave to fall from his bicycle and subsequently, eliminate him from the race. Dave has not only become the victim of cheats, but has also realized the delusion he held that Italians were supposedly of a higher and more respectable social nature than those he has spent his entire life around. This moment of clarity brings him to the decision to confess to Katherine who and what he really is. His name, his physical appearance and his very manhood remain the same, but because he is now just an everyday “cutter” kid of the local town who lied to her and not the exotic Italian exchange student Katherine thought he was, she reacts angrily and walks out on his life. Despite this blow to Dave’s romantic life, he is still able to hold onto the fact that he’s gifted in his riding skills and is determined to renew his sense of self-worth. To accomplish this, he will take part in the town’s climactic bicycle race with his three best friends at his side. This will not only be a race of human will, but will also bring a new level of competitiveness against a group of college kids also competing in the big race. This is the film’s great moment of triumphant sports victory that audiences are meant to stand up and cheer about, but it’s also a race against odds between two social classes of kids who are at the age of trying to figure out who they are, whether it’s amidst the environment of the local working class residents or amidst the alternate environment of college wealth and privilege, all within the confinements of the same small town. Of course, the classic cinematic cliché in which the underdog triumphs does not disappoint. Dave Stoller and his best friends win the big race and not only redeem their own self-respect, but apparently the respect of the college riding team, as well, as they are seen clapping their hands at the film’s end in honor of the victorious “cutter” kids. The film’s attempt to prove that in at least the world of sports competition, there are no separating classes and those who participate are of equal standing with each other. Realistically, one cannot depart from Breaking Away feeling that all social prejudices and disorders in Bloomington, Indiana will be miraculously healed on a daily basis. But for right now, the love and freedom of riding a simple bicycle appears to give us that small glimmer of hope that things can get better between people.

Now as much as I hate to admit acting like a big dork, after seeing BREAKING AWAY at the age of twelve, I became obsessed for a while with the opera piece, "The Barber of Seville", which is played as the background score during the first bicycle race. For months, after I would hum that piece in my head every time I rode my bike (I didn't even have a walkman yet!). That piece of music no longer comes to mind whenever I ride my bike today.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Dave's dad: "What's this?"
Dave's mom: "It's sauteed zucchini."
Dad: "It's I-tey food. I don't want no I-tey food!"
Mom: "It's not. I got it at the A&P. It's like... squash."
Dad: "I know I-tey food when I hear it! It's all them "eenie" foods... zucchini... and linguine... and fettuccine. I want some American food, dammit! I want French fries!"