Breakaway (1966) User Reviews

Let's dance!

[mrdonleone · 10/10 · 30 April 2008]

Hey! This picture is super! I loved the music, the images and the plot twist (if you can cal it like that).

This Tony woman, she's beautiful, and that's not all: while she dances, she takes off her clothes. Of course, I don't like this movie gem because she's naked, but it makes the film even more fantastic as it is already.

She moves while the images we view, are shockingly flashing before our eyes. I'm sure some people would become sick while watching it, because it makes your stomach turn all around. But if you stay in your seats, the trip is worthwhile.

The movie is finished at the half of it's playtime. That's where the 'plot twist' appears: we see the movie again, but now from the end to the beginning. In some magical way, Tony seems to sing the same, but that is impossible, so you really have to pay attention.

I love it, so I gave this movie 10 points. You must see it to believe it!

Absolutely beautiful light, movement, shape, and montage

[Polaris_DiB · 10/10 · 9 October 2006]

I had already seen "A Movie", Bruce Connor's montage of found footage--explosions, sex, and action, everything a Hollywood movie achieves--but this is much more his "work" in a sense that he truly knows how to create something special and beautiful without using it as a sort of tongue-in-cheek parody of convention.

A dancer dances in several different outfits, cut with black frames in between at a rapid pace to create a sort of strobe effect (Connor seems thus far in my experience to not only really like fast cutting, but to have superb control over it). The camera doesn't seem to move but between cuts will go far and close-up, sometimes in focus and sometimes out, to create a movement of bodies that goes beyond just the dance and choreography of the woman. Sometimes the image becomes abstract, in some cases so close up that it is more like a straight black and white flash, like the effect in some other experimental films like the 1999 "Outer Space".

Apparently this film is considered by some to be the first "music video", and I suppose in a way it can maintain that acknowledgment even though it seems (to me) to be much more concerned with form and movement than with providing imagery for the music that's playing. There's a lot to be asked about what a "music video" really is, of course, but I think a quick rule of thumb for the time being would be to consider it the creation of images for a music piece, not the other way around. Whichever way this movie was made, however, it's still very beautiful.

--PolarisDiB

Famous "Underground" movie.

[Mozjoukine · 4 July 2004]

BREAKAWAY was one of the most widely circulated and admired of the so called underground movies that briefly arrived above ground in the Vietnam generated confusion of the sixties.

Along with Conner's A MOVIE and COSMIC RAY, this film demonstrated an uninhibited concept of what a film was and what people would willingly watch. These were a whole lot better than a great deal of what poured out of that particular breach in the dyke. The fact that this material is all but now forgotten is revealing.

Outside it's historic context BREAKAWAY is a quite ingenious fitting of dancer Antonia Christina Basilotta (shortly to achieve as Toni Basil)dancing in - and out of - skimpy outfits, timed to her singing of the title number with open gate shots and rapid cutting, the number played forward and then backwards. It's achievement appears slim alongside the music videos, now readily available, on which it may have had a formative influence.

Audio yes, video no

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 13 May 2016]

"Breakaway" is a 5-minute black-and-white short film that has its 50th anniversary this year. It was made by American experimental movie maker Bruce Conner and I must say this is not a contender for my favorite film from him. The only thing I really liked about it was the music I guess, fairly uplifting and positive. The video was just so-so. It is a woman dancing from start to finish of this movie. I cannot really say I liked that or found it too aesthetic. Lacked a bit creativity if you ask me. Overall, I give this one a thumbs down as video plays usually a bigger role than audio and this also applies here. I suggest you watch another Bruce Conner work.