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Breaking Away
Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his three friends: the comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends' and parents' annoyance.
1979 · Directed by Peter Yates · 101 min · Drama · Comedy · Screenplay in the scene database · 9 frames
Tagline
The movie that tells you exactly what you can do with your high school diploma!
Plot
Dave, Mike, Cyril, and Moocher are working-class friends in the university town of Bloomington, Indiana who graduated from high school the year before, aren't sure what to do with their lives, and consider attending university unrealistic. They spend time swimming in an abandoned water-filled limestone quarry and sometimes clash with the more affluent Indiana University students in their hometown, who refer to them disparagingly as "cutters," referring to the locals' common work in the limestone industry.
Dave is obsessed with competitive bicycle racing, Italian racers in particular, because he recently won a Masi bicycle. His down-to-earth father, Ray, a former stonecutter who now operates his own used car business, is puzzled and exasperated by his son's love of Italian music and culture, which Dave associates with cycling. His mother, Evelyn, is more indulgent and prepares Italian dishes for the family, to Ray's annoyance.
Dave masquerades as an Italian exchange student to romance a university student named Katherine, and serenades "Caterina" outside her sorority house with Friedrich von Flotow's aria M Apparì Tutt' Amor to Cyril's guitar accompaniment. Katherine's boyfriend, Rod, and his fraternity brothers beat Cyril up, mistaking him for the suitor. Mike, a former high school football quarterback, insists on tracking down Rod for revenge over Cyril's objections. The university president reprimands the students for their arrogance toward the "cutters" and, over the students' objections, invites the town to field a team for the annual Indiana University Little 500 race.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Steve Tesich
- Cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti
- Edited by: Cynthia Scheider
- Music: Patrick Williams
- Produced by: Peter Yates
Cast
- Dennis Christopher as Dave Stoller
- Dennis Quaid as Mike
- Daniel Stern as Cyril
- Jackie Earle Haley as Moocher
- Barbara Barrie as Evelyn Stoller
- Paul Dooley as Ray Stoller
- Robyn Douglass as Katherine
- Hart Bochner as Rod
- Amy Wright as Nancy
- Peter Maloney as Doctor
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English, Italian, French
- Studios: 20th Century Fox
- Budget: $2,300,000
- Box office: $20,000,000
- Themes: indiana, usa, sports, bicycle, coming of age, working class, teenage boy, serenade, quarry, cycling, bicycle race
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