Girl on a Motorcycle [DVD] [1968]

I bought this un-cut in Germany, German packaging but English audio-track,a couple of extras but nothing much really to write about.
Imagine Diana Rigg joining "Easy Rider's" Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda for a ride across France and Germany and you will have a pretty good idea what "Girl on a Motorcycle" looks like. Made one year before "Easy Rider"; this is an amazing 1960's road movie that includes hip camera angles, groovy music, a leather suit and a Harley Super Glide.

While low-budget, it is not a thrown together "B" Movie but a thoughtful existential trip inside the mind of a flawed character who happens to be a sexy woman. On close examination, what appears to be yet another fruitless examination of the mysteries of female discontent is really a more expansive study of the human condition. Rebecca, the main character, illustrates life as a process of choosing between comfortable security and the need for freedom and excitement; a daily struggle with guilt and its consequent self-destructiveness, and the seductive lure of risk. Motivations familiar to almost all serious motorcycle riders.

In voice-over, Marianne Faithful gives us Rebecca's story in a series of flashbacks, with minimal scenes of conventional dialogue. Most of these work very well although there is a ski weekend flashback about midway through the film that looks more like a travel advertisement than a movie scene. And while much of Jack Cardiff's film is beautifully shot, the action sequences are somewhat clumsy looking and obviously low budget. And there is excessive reliance on the Elvis movie technique of projecting moving scenery(shot by the second unit) with the star pretending to be cruising along the road while actually stationary in the studio.

Cardiff was very creative with the editing and came up with some great match cuts, typically used to bring Faithful out of her frequent flashbacks/dreams. In one we see her lover slowing pulling open the zipper of her suit, then the film cuts to the tread of an Army tank moving past the place where she has been napping by her motorcycle.

Cardiff's technique was quite revolutionary at the time as his camera has a love affair with the leather suit , the motorcycle, and Faithful's eyes. His extensive use of very tight shots is extremely effective and the most pleasing thing about the film.

Faithful is on screen in almost all the scenes and gives a surprisingly good performance. Alain Delon as her lover gets a fair about of screen time (all in flashbacks). I've not been able to take Delon seriously as an actor since his performance as a character named "Baldy" in Dean Martin's "Texas Across the River" in 1966. Plus I get him confused with Jorge Rivero and his almost identical character "Capt. Pierre Cordona aka Frenchy" in "Rio Lobo". Maybe they are the same person and used two names as a tax dodge.

The DVD include a nice stills gallery and a couple trailers.

All in all I recommend this film. It has thoughtful themes and many well-shot scenes. If you like motorcycles, a sexy body in and out of a leather suit, the most beautiful eyes ever, and cute freckles you should view this film if your a real Faithful Fan.

I bought this in a fit of nostalgia, having enjoyed it as a boy interested in motorcycles and women (at a time when both were beyond me).

On watching it again I had a pleasant wallow in nostalgia, but the acting is wooden and the "erotic" scenes have dated very badly. The road movie aspect is a treat though; who wouldn't want to ride a bike across 1960s Europe?

One to enjoy at the bottom of the second bottle with a group of friends who were there at the same time.

Girl on a motorcycle is one of those films that I remember from my childhood that every body talked about but I never got to see. At the time Marian Faithfull was every schoolboys dream, free and easy and at the heart of the permissive society.Her film was talked of in hushed tones behind the bike sheds and the older kids who had (or claimed to have)skived off school and gone to see it gained so many cool points that it was hard to look at them.
Since then I have grown older (if not up),society as a whole and it's attitudes have changed beyond recognition and Marian faithfull, now well into her sixties, is no longer the siren that she was. Indeed after reading her biography and all it's winging and claims of victimisation Its hard to have any regard for her at all.
When I decided to start collecting motorcycle related films from the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies Girl On A Motorcycle was one of the first on my list. I sent off for it, through amazon, and a couple of days later it arrived on the door mat. I had no idea what the film was about, I only new that, in the sixties , it was regarded as subversive and not a film for "nice" people.
I watched it two or three times trying to decide what I thought of it. On first viewing it was a dissapointment; long, boring, pretentious and predictable. I was surprised at how beautiful Marian Faithfull was at the time, something I had forgotten. But the plot reminded me of some of Anais Ninns novels; middle class soul searching, navel gazing, bed hopping with every body taking themselves far too seriously.
After watching it a second and third time, I'm starting to think that these aspects of the film that I had considered weaknesses are actually it's strong points. The film really is a snap shot of life (middle class life) at a time when society was in a state of flux with everything up for re-evaluation, and all the boundaries were changing. The central character; the beautiful young woman rejecting her expected roll as a submissive wife and using her motorcycle to commute between her husband and her lover really was a poke in the eye for"the establishment".
Well worth a look.