32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Beautiful European "Easy Rider", April 20, 2005
This review is from: Girl on a Motorcycle (DVD)
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.
Both the VHS tape and 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.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
She's Just Magical and Sparkling in this Role, June 7, 2007
This review is from: Girl on a Motorcycle (DVD)
Marianne Faithfull is a stunner in her role as discontented young newlywed.
The scenery is gorgeous and her beauty fits right along with it, as she rides from Switzerland to Germany, to see her lover played by Alain Delon, who gave her the bike as a "wedding gift".
He plays a manipulative, ungrateful, unappreciative professor interested in her "free love".
The hallucinatory scenes can be a bit bothersome, but on the whole there is meaning to this film and also the chance to see beautiful Ms Faithfull
fresh, young,so alive and so gorgeously sexy.
See it !
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27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The World's Greatest Psychedelic Driver's Ed Film, September 6, 2003
This review is from: Girl on a Motorcycle (DVD)
Rather than suffer her 19th Nervous Breakdown disgruntled housewife Marianne Faithfull (pre-Tom Waits soundalike period) hits the European road gleefully bouncing her robust Brit bottom on her motorbike soon to be coupled with intense Eurohunk Alain Delon.
Our leather-clad goddess wistfully reflects and reminisces about her last year on earth with eye-zapping psychedelic effects. This film would actually play very well in a double-feature with the similarly wild film "Performance".
Note to Marianne: while grinding down the Autobahn on a motorbike at 95 miles an hour it's okay to flap your thighs and bounce your butt but by all means KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN!
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