I don't think many people saw this film on its first release, but I did. I was about the same age as Kay Lenz (Breezy) and it was long before I considered William Holden (frank) my favorite actor. I enjoyed the film for its joyful spirit as personified by Breezy.

This is a great love story. It deals with the nature of love, unbounded by conventions or expectations. As such, it also embodies the generally understood essence of the (California) flower child movement. Free love. If you love something, set it free...

This film has a lot to say about aging and the maintenance of dreams, the preservation of youthfulness. As such, it is inspirational. Another film that deals with this subject is "Harold and Maude".

Watching this film again took me back to the early seventies. Kay and I are now in our late sixties, but the message still resonates. Like the wonderful "Breezy's Song" by Marilyn and Alan Bergman, and Michel Legrand. I bet many people would never guess the film was directed by Clint Eastwood, if they didn't know.

Edith 'Breezy' Breezerman (Kay Lenz) is a free-loving hippie. She's an orphan from Intercourse, Pennsylvania. After finishing high school, she wanted to see the world and ended up in L.A. She sleeps with random strangers for a warm bed. She's hitchhiking and escapes from a creep. Divorced real-estate agent Frank Harmon (William Holden) reluctantly helps her. She sees a Black Cloud hanging over him. She insinuates herself into his life and they begin a relationship.

Romance is not really a Clint Eastwood forte. This is one of his earlier directing efforts. Kay Lenz is the classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl and the May to December romance is awkward at first. It all relies on Kay Lenz and she delivers a confident performance. She makes this simple story work. William Holden is able to be a not-dirty old man. The relationship is actually compelling although Eastwood should lose the montage of the romantic strode on the beach.

When William Holden took the part of Frank Harmon in Breezy it was a dress rehearsal for the same kind of role in Network where he was the older man who had fallen out of love with his wife and looking for something new and different. Of course his taste in women is a whole lot different. In Network Holden falls for the chic Network news executive Faye Dunaway and in Breezy he's entranced by the free spirited young hippie chick in the title role which Kay Lenz got her breakout role. These two women are about as different as they come.

One thing that the story and director Clint Eastwood failed to do is give us all that much information about Breezy and how her character developed as it did. She's a type that was quite common in 1973 and it's assumed by the audience that the Vietnam War and the counterculture of free love makes her typical of young people. So when she drops into Holden's life by kind of forcing him to give her a lift in his car after a night of sex with Dennis Olivieri who picked her up.

Holden's gone through a bitter and nasty divorce and we also are not quite sure about the whys and wherefores there. But Eastwood kind of takes care of it from his end when Holden and Lenz at a fancy restaurant encounter his ex-wife Joan Hotchkiss who's there with a date. Her one scene with Holden and Lenz is Breezy's most unforgettable point. This is one bitter and drunken women and while we don't really know what went wrong, it's clear why Holden wanted out of the marriage and why he's soured on the female of the species.

There was a 33 year age difference between Holden and Lenz and most wouldn't give odds for this lasting, but you never know.

Both Holden and Lenz give a good account of themselves making up for some plot deficiencies in Breezy.