Breezy

Another fine 70s adult character drama with typically rich details, compelling characterization and seemingly aimless pacing representative of that great and celebrated era in American movies.

Directed with inspired understatement by Clint Eastwood early in his film-making career and with a well crafted script it's an excellent spin on the older man/young girl conflict set in photogenic LA.

Kay Lenz so winning and charming as the free spirited idealistic temptress. With his fabulously craggy face and usual smoky boozy sincere caustic growl William Holden created another memorable portrait of aging dispirited masculinity.

If I had seen it last year I would have certainly been shrieking it's virtues during my rant against Lost in Translation.

I have to echo some of the other comments here and say that this great film SHOULD BE RE-RELEASED ON VHS AND DVD!! ARE you listening Mr Eastwood??! A wonderful cross generational love story that doesn't ring a false note, I'm glad I was able to find a copy of the unedited for TV version since I've only seen a TV edited version some years ago and it stuck in my head....it's that good a film and I recommend it to all!

I don't think many people saw this film on its first release, but I did. I was about the same age as Kay Lenz (Breezy) and it was long before I considered William Holden (frank) my favorite actor. I enjoyed the film for its joyful spirit as personified by Breezy.

This is a great love story. It deals with the nature of love, unbounded by conventions or expectations. As such, it also embodies the generally understood essence of the (California) flower child movement. Free love. If you love something, set it free...

This film has a lot to say about aging and the maintenance of dreams, the preservation of youthfulness. As such, it is inspirational. Another film that deals with this subject is "Harold and Maude".

Watching this film again took me back to the early seventies. Kay and I are now in our late sixties, but the message still resonates. Like the wonderful "Breezy's Song" by Marilyn and Alan Bergman, and Michel Legrand. I bet many people would never guess the film was directed by Clint Eastwood, if they didn't know.

One of Clint Eastwood's early yet still obscure directorial efforts, `Breezy' gently and charmingly explores the nature of wisdom, which can be present in the most unusual of people and the real meaning of happiness, which is usually found in the oddest and least-expected of places, usually when one is not looking for it.

Amid the smoldering cultural wreckage of the recently-ended 1960s with its nagging remnants of the shrill `don't trust anyone over 30' crowd and the seemingly still-unbridgeable `generation gap,' the odd and quirky relationship between the youthful, Ophelia-like Edith Alice `Breezy' Breezerman (Lenz) and the middle-aged Frank Harmon (Holden) successfully and simultaneously reveals several very simple but still frequently-ignored truths; that shrewdness and insight are not necessarily the sole province of the `aged' and that a carefree, happy spontaneity isn't and shouldn't be automatically restricted to the `young.' And, more subtly, we also are quietly reminded that neither wisdom nor happiness can realistically exist isolated from one another and that the bitter memories of our own respective pasts can often tragically prevent us from getting what we truly need the most.

Like the Italian neo-realist director Sergio Leone under which Eastwood successfully toiled in the 1960s, the personalities of the film's characters are deliberately and slowly intensified but not over-presented or stereotyped, which adds to the power, insight and poignancy of this understated and well-produced film.

Breezy (1973)

Never mind the Clint Eastwood penchant for having old men sleep with young women. This is a fairly nuanced story about exactly that problem—and it's a problem on one level or another when two people fall in love who are very different in age.

It also helps that veteran, 54 year old actor William Holden pulls off a delicate, charming, perfectly grumpy performance as the older guy—someone with a beautiful house in the hills near Hollywood, but where he won't be found floating dead in the pool at the end, or the beginning. Yes, this is the Holden of "Sunset Blvd." It feels odd to remind people (some of you) about an actor who was once, briefly, both a screen idol and an box office success. His rocky career never quite reached its intended peak, but there are some really fine roles he took on with surprising ease and sincerity. This is one of them.

The young woman in this case is Kay Lenz, a little known actress (19 at the time) with some television and a tiny part in "American Graffiti" under her belt before the director pulled her in for this role, which fits her like a glove. The very naive purity of the character is exactly what this actress seems to actually have in excess. When she meets Holden early in the film, they are exactly opposites—except that they are both deep down very kind. And so the differences become ways to learn and grow— especially for the old man, who doesn't quite get the hippie mentality for its better sides.

The plot actually fits into a few clichés a little too easily, and overall it's a bit simple. The details around the couple—her friends and his—are tossed in like peanuts on the ice cream, and the movie is worse for it. Holden is meant to struggle with being, on the surface, a kind of child molester, but it is carried only in his face, not in the external conversations. (Luckily this is enough.) The utter naiveté of Lenz's girl, named Breezy, leaves us with less to do inside her head, which is too bad because she seems smart and street smart, both. There was more here by far than gets plumbed.

Another aspect that makes this worth watching is the feeling of 1970 or so in the overall scenario. (The movie was filmed in 1972 but the hippies, and the clash of cultures, feels a couple years earlier.) Unlike some movies where the mis-en-scene feels timeless from this New Hollywood period ("Five Easy Pieces" perhaps), this movie is particularly dated, and that might be a good thing. It's so much about the era, and a product of it, that is drips with symbols from the time.

It also drips with sappy folk-rock music for a soundtrack, which is a product of the time and of Eastwood's lifelong attempt to make music in his movies pull from "real music" including his own compositions. It's a distraction here.

Despite all the gaffes and shortcomings, "Breezy" is really worth watching for all that works, especially the shimmering, contrasting main characters.