Breaking Away dir. by Peter Yates (review)

For a Taiwanese immigrant to critique the 1979 film Breaking Away—set in the midwestern college town of Bloomington, Indiana, where the Little 500 bicycle race is held annually—may seem downright odd. Interests usually denote self-interest, however the self is defined. When I arrived at Indiana University Bloomington (IU) in 1982 for graduate studies in the English department, I soon became familiar with the film that won an Oscar (Steve Tesich's screenplay) and a Golden Globe (Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy). Tesich himself had been trained at IU in the 1960s; in one shot, "English Major" was intentionally scrawled across a used car's windshield. As I had just embarked on my PhD, I should have attended to the taunt: English was a useless major, now that Tesich—a Russian major—had written an award-winning script. I was introduced to the film by Boyd, an IU bus driver who ferried me to campus for classes. Boyd was a typical Hoosier, with a heavy accent that I could hardly decipher—I had enough trouble with Standard English, however "standard" is defined. Boyd obviously took certain pride in this film that depicted the town-and-gown tension. Perhaps because IU was his employer, he harbored mixed feelings about the institution that put Bloomington on the map and food on his table, while also lording over the working-class locals nicknamed "cutters" in the film. If my critique is a nostalgic trip, then it clicks nicely with the central motif of Breaking Away as a flight of fancy into a desired world beyond reach. Returning to the past morphs into a dream for the future—not just for myself, but for the film crew and viewers, past and future.

Born in Yugoslavia, the screenwriter Tesich was fourteen when he came to America. A member of Phi Kappa Psi during his years at IU, Tesich seemingly would not have been a typical fit for a midwestern fraternity. Director Peter Yates was an Englishman with no connection to IU until the making of this film. Though his film ends with a freeze frame of a father looking back at his son, Yates never looked back at the Midwest for the remainder of his professional career. None of the leading actors hailed from the Hoosier State, either. Philadelphian Dennis Christopher plays local bicyclist Dave Stohler who wins the Little 500 with injured, bleeding legs and his feet taped to the pedals. Texan Dennis Quaid plays Mike, the high school quarterback plagued by an inferiority complex in the face of rich frat boys. Hart Bochner, who plays the "hot rodder" Rod on the university swim team and drives a blue Mercedes convertible, is Canadian. And Robyn Douglass arrives from California to play Dave's love interest, Katherine. Clearly, outsiders "broke away" from their biological and experiential selves to fashion this universal dream of the victorious local underdog.

The four "B-town boys"—Dave, Mike, Cyril (Daniel Stern), and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley)—languish after high school graduation over a hot summer. They are confronted by the harsh reality of an "invasive species" of rich, athletic, and beautiful college students taking over Bloomington, from their favorite swimming hole in an abandoned limestone quarry to the town's streets. While Mike seethes in frustration and rage, breaking his head during a swimming duel with Rod in the quarry, Dave fantasizes an exit into an Italian alter ego. Prompted by his interest in Cinzano, an Italian bicycle racing team, Dave shaves his legs (as Italian bicyclists do) and speaks to his parents in half-baked Italian. He even goes so far as to take on the persona of an exchange student to serenade his sorority dream girl Katherine, or "Caterina" in Dave's affected Italian (replete with trilling Rs). Dave's father, Ray (Paul Dooley), is a used car salesman and a caricature of the potbellied, bacon-eating, sharpies-in-shirt-pocket Hoosier. Ray gloats over selling the worst car on his lot to a "smart college kid," which suggests that he is, subconsciously at...