La bande des quatre

This film was a pleasant surprise. No sex, no violence, no special effects. Just an incredibly literate and humorous script (which won an Oscar for Steve Tesich) and fantastic performances by the four leads. This is a film for those who still believe that good cinema requires meaningful dialogue and acting that is achingly real in its sincerity. Don't get me wrong: sex and violence have a very real and justifiable place in film; but this movie would have suffered from such a gratuitous inclusion. Peter Yates, the director, has done a fantastic job of pacing the film, and the score, consisting mostly of Rossini overtures, and excerpts from Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony (#4 in A Major, Op. 90), is an inspired touch, adding precisely the right atmosphere. This is the kind of low-budget triumph that the film community constantly extols for P.R. purposes, yet never supports with actual awards.

...and unsure of your future. Other reviewers have given good summaries of the film, so I won't go into it. It's interesting though that of the four principle actors, only Dennis Quaid had any kind of career after this, which is very surprising since they were all such strong performances. "Breaking Away" really captures that limbo period right after high school when you're not sure what the future holds. I identified strongly with Dennis Christopher's character - I though I was going to just pump gas or flip burgers for a year before my mom pushed me to go to college. In other words, this is a realistic, character-driven movie - you'll probably find a bit of yourself in one, or several, of the characters. There's also real chemistry here between all the actors. And the photography really captures the beauty of the Midwest (some of you, no doubt, are scratching your heads after reading that). This is a gem - don't pass it up at the video store or when it appears next on TV.

I went to see this movie when it first came out. We had decided to go to a double feature of two movies that we had never heard of, knowing that in that day and age, a double feature meant that at least one, if not both movies, had to be pretty awful. The first film was Starting Over with Burt Reynolds, and it was fairly good. So my friends were sure that the other would have to be terrible, but we had nothing better to do, so I convinced them to stay. Before three lines of dialogue I was absolutely hooked. I have seen it at least twenty times and the witty dialogue and rapport of the characters gets me every time. The music accents the film beautifully. The cinematography is gorgeous. But the story is what really matters. Four guys finding there way in a place where they feel little hope for the future, one a dreamer whose dreams are crushed, but he finds the spirit to pick up and start dreaming again. Delightful all the way around.

I was nine years old when I first saw 'Breaking Away', and I think the book adaptation may have been the first more-or-less novel-length thing I ever read. My wild enthusiasm after leaving the theatre was similar at the time to my previous reaction to 'Star Wars', a fact that I attribute to the natural electrical charge of the endings of both films.

Of course, a nine-year-old lacks the world experience to empirically understand the central messages of this film, and at the time my primary devotion to it was centered around Dave Stoller's orange Masi racing bike, a thing that I coveted with the passions of a kid on Christmas Eve.

The movie made me mad with bicycle lust, and I frowned on every Huffy I saw at school. I used to draw pictures of Masi, Bianchi and Olmo bikes all the time after seeing this, and I shamelessly begged my parents for an Italian-made, Campagnolo-equipped racer - a futile thing to do, as my parents knew not to purchase something that expensive for a boy who would physically out-grow a pair of Levis within a school year. Ultimately, I was propelled into the worship of Eddy Merckx while all my classmates were digging into their Terry Bradshaw Topps cards, unaware - as I'm positive they still are - of who the hell Eddy Merckx even is.

BUT...'Breaking Away' is not just a bicycle film - not by a long-shot, and I knew it then too, but that just wasn't very important to me at a time when bicycles were all-important.

Despite my youthful energies, I never did pursue bicycle racing,(although I am definitely a touring enthusiast whose passion for Italian-made bicycles has finally seen fruition) but 'Breaking Away' never left me. It was the REST of the film that eventually got to me - and somewhat later in life - when my emotions and experiences with the world ran deeper.

In short, this film explores many strands: the aimlessness of youth colliding with the responsibilities of adulthood; the often heartbreaking romantic fantasies of people who wish they could be something else; lying and cheating and the false nature of gains made through them; the importance of strong family relations and friendships; and life in small-town America - and it does all this with extraordinary craft, honesty and sensitivity. It's beautiful, and more importantly, it is soulful and original. Although certainly dated in appearance, I'll even toss in the cliche that it is *timeless*, because the themes and characters are so.

The characters themselves are all wonderfully brought out by the perfect casting - it's been said here, but the fact that Dennis Christopher never achieved star-status is truly a shame and a waste of a potentially amazing talent. He played the lead role with a believable intensity and a really quite perfect understanding of his character. Dave Stoller's painful self-realization after the Cinzano race was as memorable a job of acting as I can think of. Paul Dooley and Barbara Barry were also wonderful, as were Quaid, Stern and Haley - every one of them created a personality for their characters, both in dialogue and physical reaction. The rest of the cast was likewise fine, each actor doing the best they could with what were sometimes stock roles (the college kids, for example, including Robyn Douglas, the female romantic role)

The direction, story and, most especially, the dialogue were great as well.

I also picked up a love of Mendelssohn and Rossini when I was just a kid after seeing this - the film score was superb, all the while taking the Stanley Kubrick/Woody Allen approach by choosing some choice compositions of a time long past, rather than belabor the audience with the refried horrors so typical of modern film-score composition.

I hope this movie doesn't become a relic - it seems its own sleeper status has kept it shelved over the years. Mention it to just about any American born before 1975, and they'll know what it is, but only in the way I did when I was nine: they'll usually say something like, "oh yeah, the bicycle film! I remember that one", and then they'll likely have little else to say about it, which is a shame. I still whole-heartedly place this movie among my very favorites every time, and I trumpet it whenever I get into discussions with other people about the movies I love.

This is my absolute favourite coming of age movie! It has an endearing teenage hero, an engaging story, a touching theme, an amazing musical score, and an abundance of humour. The story revolves around Dave Stoller and his three buddies, four misfits who have just graduated from high school.

Dave recently received a bicycle as a gift, has become a good racer locally, and his heroes are the Italian Cinzano racing team. To the consternation of some, his life begins to revolve around his dreams of becoming a racing champion, to the extent that he basically tries to turn himself into an Italian. He learns the language, absorbs the culture, listens to its operas, and gives his cat an Italian name Fellini! He even pretends to be an Italian exchange student in order to impress a pretty sorority girl named Katherine, whom he calls Caterina and feels would otherwise be beyond his reach.

Dave makes an appealing hero, wonderfully portrayed by Dennis Christopher, vulnerable but with an amazing joie de vivre. His hilarious attempts at becoming Italian, for example shaving his legs like their men but not their women, proved one of the highlights of the movie. The scene where he serenades his Caterina at her sorority house has to be one of the most charming in all filmdom. I was also bowled over by his endearing enthusiasm when he discovers "The Italians are coming!", that his racing heroes will soon be arriving in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana where the entire tale is set, culminating in the Indiana Little 500 cycling race.

Dave is a kid who doesn't think he is good enough for college, lives in a fantasy world of Italian cycling, and wants to break away from his own aimless, mundane life. This is a typical coming of age movie in that he learns a lot about himself and the realities of life, especially from the behaviour of his heroes, the Cinzano racing team. His three sidekicks are a sympathetic bunch -- the rebellious, angry Mike, the short, feisty Moocher, and the goofy, appealing Cyril who seems to have no family. Through competing against the college crowd in the Little 500, they learn lessons in self esteem and team spirit, believing in yourself and striving toward reachable goals.

Breaking Away is a movie with obvious social class themes. Dave and his friends are "townies" called Cutters, named for the stonecutters from the town's quarries. The students at the nearby college campus look down their noses at these Cutters. However, Dave's father, who is a car salesman lacking a college education himself, teaches his son to take pride in the name, that it was stonecutters who built these impressive college buildings.

The film is refreshingly unusual in having a major sympathetic role played by Dave's parents. I absolutely loved the father, portrayed by Paul Dooley, the source of much of the film's humour, announcing for example that he doesn't want anything in his house that ends with 'ini'! Mr. Stoller despairs of his son's Italian phase, fearing verbally that Dave is going to wind up an Italian bum! Both the marital relationship between Dave's parents and the bond between father and son are captured with poignancy as well as humour.

When I first saw this movie after its original release, the thing that remained with me besides the charming joie de vivre of its hero was the wonderful Italian music, from Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony and a Rossini opera. This musical score provides magnificent accompaniment to the bicycle racing sequences, especially one in which Dave is racing the Cinzano truck on a highway heading toward Bloomington!

This is a heartwarming movie that no one should miss. It may be almost thirty years old but its characters and story are as engaging as the day it was released. I won't give it away, but that last scene is priceless!