Search - Breezy on DVD

Sharon F. (Shar) from AVON PARK, FL
Reviewed on 2/11/2024...

A very different love story with a free-spirited young lady awakening the heart of an older man. Just proves that you can't help who you fall in love with and age doesn't matter.

Larry N. from BEALETON, VA
Reviewed on 9/8/2016...

A pretty good movie directed by Clint Eastwood and he even has a brief cameo in it if you have a sharp eye. There's plenty of eye-candy from Kay. If you can't wait to get the DVD, it's on youtube in its entirety.

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

A touching romantic drama

L. St Laurent | United Kingdom | 06/06/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Breezy (1973)Breezy has been a film I have known about for about sixteen years but have never seen until last week when I finally got the DVD.
Directed by Clint Eastwood, the film has been pretty much forgotten about over the years, not helped by the unavailability of it on home video, mainly here in the United Kingdom.
But now it's here, at last.Eastwood, fast becoming the most popular movie star in the early seventies after the success of his Spaghetti Western trilogy (1964,'65,'66) and his roles in Dirty Harry (1971) and High Plains Drifter (1973) turned his eye to directing and directed the highly acclaimed Play Misty For Me in 1971.For Eastwood's third directorial effort Breezy in 1973, Eastwood decided to stay behind the camera instead and the leading man duties were handed over to William Holden.
Eastwood felt he was to young to play the role of Frank Harmon, although he was 43 at the time and more than twice the age of Kay Lenz who played the role of Breezy, Lenz was only twenty. Incidentally William Holden was 55.Filmed entirely in Los Angeles this low key effort is a story set to a May - December romance between a successful businessman Frank Harmon (Holden) and a free spirited hippy chick named Breezy (Lenz).
I can recommend the DVD to anyone interested in an often touching romantic drama with consistently well acted performances from the films two leading actors.Here is the basic synopsis of the film.Frank Harmon (William Holden) and Breezy (Kay Lenz) are polar opposites: he is a successful, middle-aged real estate executive disillusioned by love; she is a young, outgoing free spirit with a trusting heart. Following a chance meeting, Frank reluctantly befriends the eccentric young woman, and eventually their friendship evolves into a love affair. The relationship gives Frank a renewed outlook on life but also fills him with doubts about their age difference, and he eventually breaks it off. The painful separation from Breezy forces Frank to decide whether or not to take a risk that may give him his one true shot at happiness.Eastwood as director has a tendency to let his actors just get on with it and do their thing and in this film William Holden and Kay Lenz really shine through.
Both actors are marvellous to watch and give truly outstanding performances.
Eastwood was proud of the film but unfortunately it did not do very well upon it's release and received harsh reviews.
One wonders if the film may have been more a success if Eastwood himself took the starring role. But personally I believe William Holden delivered a charming side to his character that I don't think Eastwood would have been capable of at the time.Eastwood during this period was fast becoming inpatient with the way Universal were handling his movies and made one more for the studio, The Eiger Sanction (1975), before sealing a partnership with Warner Bros. that has lasted for nearly thirty years.About the DVD.The film is presented in an anamorphically enhanced 16:9 format in the original theatrical ratio of 1.85:1. The picture looks quite superb.
The sound is delivered in 2.0 Dolby Digital Mono which is just fine for this type of film and sounds good for it's age.
The only down side to this DVD is the lack of any extras. No trailer, nothing except the standard menu options, scene access, language and subtitle options etc.Notes:Sondra Locke auditioned for the role of Breezy but was turned down. She would later go on to star in six Eastwood movies and the couple had a twelve year relationship, but that's another story.Breezy was the first film which Clint directed but did not star.The film cost $750,000 to make."

Wisdom & Happiness

Michael E. Kreca | San Diego, Calif., USA | 03/04/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"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," which had left many men and women from all age groups deeply confused, adrift and alienated, the odd and quirky relationship between the youthful, Ophelia-like Edith Alice "Breezy" Breezerman (Lenz) and the cynical, middle-aged Frank Harmon (Holden) successfully and simultaneously reveals several very simple but still frequently-ignored truths; that wisdom 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 and unpleasant experiences of our own respective pasts can often tragically keep us from getting what we truly want and need the most.

Like the Italian neo-realist director Sergio Leone, in whose classic "spaghetti westerns" the eponymous "man with no name" successfully toiled in the 1960s, director Eastwood slowly and deliberately unfolds the personalities of the film's characters (warts and all) but does not self-consciously over-present or stereotype them, which adds to the power, insight and poignancy of this understated and well-produced film, topical, yes, but in its own way, timeless, one head and shoulders above such glittery, simpleminded and laughably stereotypical trash like "Pretty Woman.""

A gentle, pleasant surprise from Clint Eastwood

Steven Sprague | Newport Beach, CA | 01/27/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Clint Eastwood's 2nd directorial effort is a gentle, pleasant surprise that probably will evoke a completely different reaction if one were to observe a strict adherence to societal norms. A 50 plus well-to-do business guy with a 19-year-old hippie drifter? Not necessarily uncommon but in this film the girl's not in it for the money and the guy's not in it for the sex. They genuinely love and cherish each other, and strangely, this is the element of controversy.

William Holden plays Frank, a cynical divorced real estate broker who lives by himself with only a series of uncommitted relationships for companionship and a mental rulebook that precludes serious involvement. He is surrounded by like-minded cynics that all want for something they have long since given up on . . . youth. Not so much in chronological terms, but more in attitude and that sense of wonder about life. Breezy is the very embodiment of that sense of wonder, and despite her 19 years, possesses a wisdom that cuts through the cynical disillusionment of Frank, who unlike what you'd expect, never makes a sexual advance toward the younger girl, even though she's very attractive and probably willing. For her part, Breezy recognized the sensitive soul that Frank has taken pains to suppress and confounds his suspicions by giving of herself to him without asking for anything in return. When he eventually gives in to his feelings, the age difference becomes irrelevant, but Breezy and Frank do not exist in a vacuum and the outside world eventually fills his head with doubt. His best friend, while being envious of the "zing " Breezy has put into Frank's life, laments thus: "Why should a young girl like that love an old fart like me? I'd be a meal ticket for her and nothing more." And even if it could be more, "where could I go with her without feeling like a child molester?" And so Frank smolders in a crisis of perception that already had been countered by Breezy in an earlier scene. "Is that how it is Frankie? Do you start believing what you see in the mirror and forget about what you feel inside? Do you stop feeling because the outside of you makes it seem foolish? Does becoming older mean feeling foolish? What's there to look forward to if you can't go on loving and being loved?" Surely this bit of wisdom transcends any distance of years between two people.
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