Breaking Away · reception & legacy

1979 · Peter Yates

How Breaking Away has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A low-budget sleeper in 1979 that built on word of mouth into a Best Picture nominee and a screenplay Oscar for Steve Tesich; today it's routinely ranked among the great American sports movies and treated as pure comfort-classic material.

What's debated

Fans love to argue it's the best sports movie ever made — and the most underrated of 1979's stacked Best Picture field.

Its footprint

It's THE movie for cyclists, and 'Cutters' jumped off the screen into real life — Indiana University's actual Little 500 has been raced by teams named Cutters in the film's honor ever since. Paul Dooley's anti-Italian-food rant ('I want some American food, dammit!') and 'Refund?!' remain endlessly quoted.

Where it stands

A beloved 'you must see this' comfort classic — not flashy canon, but the kind of film people press on friends and cyclists treat as scripture.

★ Did you know? Screenwriter Steve Tesich rode for the Phi Kappa Psi team that won Indiana University's real Little 500 in 1962 — and his teammate Dave Blase, the inspiration for the Italian-obsessed hero, appears in the film as the race announcer.