The Girl on a Motorcycle

An emerging cult classic that was hard to find until its recent release on video, GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE is beautiful in its simplicity. Marianne Faithfull's character serves as a wish-fulfilment fantasy for both men and women, she's a figure of liberation and freedom who bucks social conventions to follow her heart. The film was a labor of love for veteran Hollywood cinematographer Jack Cardiff, and captures the late 1960's zeitgeist that is nowadays parodied in films like "Austin Powers." But one need only compare the opening sequence of this film to the beginning of David Lynch's "Lost Highway" to see the influence this film still has thirty years later.

Rated "X" when it was originally released, even the "uncensored" version would be lucky to get an "R" these days, which more reflects changing social morays than the filmmakers' intentions. Far from reputation the film has developed, it is in fact an intriguing psychological study of a troubled young woman who must choose either a safe, loveless marriage or a passionate affair with a man who vows never to love again.

I'm a sucker for swinging 60's era flicks, even cheesy ones (because of the great visuals), but I had heard that this film was very so unwatchably BAD that I never made it a priority on my mod movie flicks list. So I am REALLY glad that it popped up on cable just as I was flipping the channels. The story is okay (not great, but not a disaster), the dialog is a little rough at times but not awful, and the tragic ending was a little on the Russ Meyers side. But Marianne Faithful is just STUNNING throughout the movie (any of today's Hollywood starlets WISH they had an ounce of her natural beauty and on-screen presence), Alain Delon is a stone fox, and the dreamy flashbacks provide enough of a plot to make this film, dare I say, enjoyable:)

Needless to say, not only was I thrilled I caught it on cable, but I was equally pleased to have stumbled upon it TWICE in one week. Definitely adding the DVD to my retro movie collection.

What annoyed me about this film was the fact that Alain Delon got top billing for the movie, which is somewhat unfair to Marianne Faithfull seeing as though Alain Delon is only in the film for a collective 40 mins.

But despite that small annoyance, the film is very interesting, but I do believe I say that out of sympathy. The film basically follows Marianne Faithfully on a large motorcycle, which does look like a shocking studio prop a lot of the time, through Alsace to Heidleberg in Germany, to meet up with her motorcycle lover Alain Delon. The story of their relationship is told via flashbacks which is told through flashbacks which are then told through flashbacks etc.

On the whole the film was a daring 1960's movie which aimed at showing raunchy sex scenes through hip psychedelic camera shots and just general 60'sness, if you know what I mean.

It won't be great cinematic viewing (although the shots of Marianne Faithfull bouncing around on a motocycle in nothing but a leather catsuit is somewhat great!) But the movie will offer you something different that you don't see everyday.

Cult movies don't come much 'cultier' than "The Girl on a Motorcycle". This film was British in name only; fundamentally it was French through and through from its source novel, (La Motocyclette by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues), to its leading actor, Alain Delon. Pop singer Marianne Faithful, naked but for a black leather jump suit, was really only standing in for Bardot. There's no real plot to speak of but there's a lot of sixties psychedelia, sex, nudity, cheesy dialogue (Your body is like a violin in a velvet case), and, of course, Faithful tearing along the highways and byways of Europe on a big, phallic motorbike to the bed of her lover, Delon.

The director was a somewhat unlikely Jack Cardiff whose superb cinematography also gives the film its texture. Faithful's non- performance is really rather appealing while the film itself is ripe for rediscovery. It's not actually very good but it's certainly weird enough to be of more than passing interest.

I'm an admirer of Jack Cardiff's earlier work as a cinematographer with name directors which included Hitchcock, Huston and Powell & Pressburger amongst many others although I must admit that this very much of its time film with elements of art-house, psychedelia, road movie and soft porn isn't one I'd normally associate with him.

It's an odd film, thin on plot but thick on plastering Marianne Faithfull and to a lesser extent Alain Delon's naked bodies over the screen. She's Rebecca the stuffy old village bookkeeper's daughter, drifting into marriage with stuffy young schoolteacher Raymond, until she encounters Delon's mean and moody Daniel on the continent and it's not long before she enters the lion's den in establishing a physical connection with him. But tortured soul Daniel isn't interested in a lasting relationship and seems quite happy to leave the girl in torment which he compounds by gifting her a spanking new motorbike as a teasing reminder of their tryst as in between their lovemaking sessions he's handily taught her how to ride his motorbike.

The ending you can almost literally see coming round the corner in a way that Rebecca clearly didn't and it is most shockingly and effectively done, but you have to say that pretty much all that went before it was rather dull, pretentious stuff and nonsense. For every carefully crafted landscape shot, with Cardiff employing so many airborne tracking shots you wonder he didn't invent the drone shot fifty years early, there are just as many awful back projection shots of Faithfull in particular but also Delon tearing it up on the road. Then just to firmly date-stamp his film as being made in 1968, he employs weird saturated colour effects usually when the horny couple are in bed.

Of course both Delon and Faithfull for different reasons, were hot at the time but they're hardly required to act. One suspects in fact the film was little more than a vehicle (sorry!) to get them naked together, although I had to smile at one point at the strategically placed vase of flowers covering Delon's manhood while elsewhere of course, pretty much all of Faithfull's anatomy is on show, even if only in glimpses.

Weighed down in addition by a dull soundtrack, I'm afraid this feature just never clicked into top gear (sorry again!) for me at all.