Customer Reviews

The Girl on a Motorcycle

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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 !

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!

Girl on a motorcycle is a 1960s time capsule piece about a forlorn wife who leaves her life behind to flee to her lover. The film is essentially a well-done exploitation film in that sets out to exploit Marriane Faithful and her motorcycle while punctuating the action and nudity with philosophical snippets of dialogue. Sort of like if Goddard directed "Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill". However, the visuals are what's important in this film and they don't disapoint, especially if you are a fan of 60s films, such as "The Trip" or "Psych-Out".

This is NOT a really good film. It IS amusing and entertaining. The motorcycle scenes are not blue screened, which helps a lot. Marianne Faithful, a former Mick Jagger lover, stars in this, and there are a few naked shots, but nothing to write home about by todays standards. Certainly not enough to earn an "X" rating as it did on release in the US. The sound is nice for mono, and the Harley actually sounds like a Harley, something that you do not always get in movies. There is a lot of pshycadelic footage that may have been really trippy in the 60s, but looks really dated today.

Ms. Faithful is acceptable as an actress, with a running voice-over through much of the film. She isn't great however, and some of the lines make me laugh. When she takes off to go see her lover and cheat on wimpy hubby (think Satan's lover Chris from South Park), she starts the Harley and yells, "I turn myself on!" When I'm riding my own bikes around, this sometimes pops into my head and I yell it out loud (ONLY if wearing a full face helmet) and crack myself up.

There are some nice touches. The film is shot very dark while The Girl is in France where she lives with her husband, but once she enters her lover's country, Germany, everything becomes much more vivid and beautiful. There is also one nice 360 shot of The Girl on the motorcycle. Not exactly Matrix, but still, at least they tried.

The pacing is a little slow, and it seems to last longer than its running time. Its one of those movies (not films) where you can read a magazine while you watch. If you take Girl on a Motorcycle for what it is - a fun but dated movie from the 60s - it is a nice enough diversion. Compared to better films, even Easy Rider, it is less compelling.

Forget the love story. If you're a real biker you'll love the flick for the asthetics of motorcycles and the feeling of riding in the wind. It features a very nice Norton and a Harley. This movie will be appreciated by those who lived in the 60's and rode bikes. I highly reccomend this video to all us older bikers!

In the 60s "Girl On A Motorcycle" was payed little attention,did poorly at the box office, and by 1960s standereds was written off as a "phoney" an unsucessful attempt by Ronald Duncan and Jack Cardiff at making a movie with a "mind-boggling anti-sanity" feel. And if THATS the case and this REALLY was an "embarrassing attempt" then they certainly played it off well, didn't they? Disregard all the negitive reviews, Im sure that if this kind of movie was released in today's pathetic film industry of arsty-fartsy posers...it would have been a classic right away and still carry the label of being a cult at the same time.

Girl on A Motorcycle has the 1960s written all over it! Its not brilliant like A Clockwork Orange or Mick Jagger's movie "Performance" (Nobody asked but Mick was also Marianne Faithful's love intreast at the time)
When released in 1968 Warner Brothers carried it under the title "Naked Under Leather" and was also severely editied to maintain an "R" rating~WHICH IS THE MAIN REASON WHY THE MOVIE PROBLEY GOT TRASHED not because it was bad, but because it was so ridiculously cut. Thankfully now you can buy the European verison which shows the whole un-cut thing.
Marianne Faithful (who complety surprised me with her A+ acting skills) stars as a newlywed housewife who wakes up in the middle of the night after an erotic fantasy of her and her ex lover Alain. She realizes Alain's the one she really loves. She puts on her quite small fitting fur-lined leather jump suit (and only wearing the jumpsuit) she takes off in her motorcycle for a long ride though Europe'c country side. Basically on her way, she experiences fantasies about her husband and her "lover".
I did put off watching this movie for quite some-time..it just didnt seem as if would be worth while, but even by its little-know status is still very underrated, im glad i finally got around to it;) If your a fan of the 60s such as (Psych-Out,Valley of the Dolls,Head,Faster Pussycat Kill Kill,Barbarella,Head, or even Mr.Powers (thats AUSTIN Powers) himself...you would enjoy this;)

I'm not too familiar with the specifics of Faithfull's upbringing, or lack thereof, but I did find this to be a rather autobiographical fare at best. It's a rather deep look at her character's life, and how it seemed to be pararelling her own. The first scene has her dreaming of being in a circus performing in a leather motorcycle suit, and a person as her husband is whipping her, and the children are laughing at him and her, and then there's a man in a chair who looked like a psychologist who was laughing at her. I found all of this intriguing as you could say that the psychologist was acting like: "We are responsible for the choices we make in our lives." Hence the laughing. I am still trying to learn this as after living life as a victim all these years, and being raised to believe that there's a good person and bad person, and that there's a right way and a wrong way, and those who do wrong are bad, and the victims are good. I see that when Faithfull puts on her suit, and rides away on her motorcycle, and tries to find herself. The question is: "What Is Herself?" She was married to a school teacher, but it turns out to be a loveless marriage as he is too reasonable, and too wishy-washy in her eyes. He may had been the best thing for her, but she'll never know. She left him to go join a man who turned her on in everyway, and including the motorcycle. Had she had a happy life would she had turn to the motorcycle the way she did? Well as I said this could very well be her life story as she had a father who seemed wrapped up in books, and was rather distant towards her, and Faithfull was brought up in a Utopian Commune, and her father was a lover of words. Perhaps that's why she married her husband because he was a school teacher, and perhaps why she was going to her lover the one who turned her onto the motorcycle as he was also into words, but not as much as her husband. Faithfull's character seemed as though she was trying to free herself from the chains of her father, but wanted a man who was like her father in the sense he had a spine in which was a quality or trait that appealed to her, but not to be critical of her. Her husband was not critical of her, but he was also spineless as he didn't even question it when her lover gave her a motorcycle for a wedding gift. Her lover pleases her in every way, but he lost his first wife in a crash, and since then emotionally he was devoid of love for another woman, and just used Faithfull's character to get by pretty much, and what more he knew she'd come to him, and that was probably why she ran away because her lover was right. He knew he pleased her, and so with her needs she would come to him. In the end she tried to focus more on the bike as she knew she would not have a future with either man, and she certainly didn't want to go home to a father who was going to chastise her, and make her feel stupid for having an affair with a man before she was supposed to be married to her boyfriend. She focused on the motorcycle as the link to her lover, and she rode it till death did they part. Faithfull's character is a product of a person who's parents didn't make children feel loved.....especially when a parent died. Here's some for example:

1. Scrooge: His mother died while giving birth to him, and his father never forgave him, so he shut down, and focused on making a success of himself to atone for his self-esteem that was shattered by his father because of bitterness.

2.Jenny: From "Forrest Gump". After the death of her mother her father began to rape her something awful to where she pretty much had run away from the man who trully loved her, and would get herself in one scrape after another in a quest to find herself.

3. Forrest: He spent his life pursuing the love of his life only to have her turn him away everytime, and so with everything bad in his life weighing heavilly down upon him he would spend three and a half years of his life running back and forth across the U.S. and in some ways it helped him to come home to himself. This is what I do with my reviews.

I know that this could've inspired "Easy Rider", and to me it's a better vehicle than "Easy Rider". The use of flashbacks, and dreams were done rather well in this movie, and the colors also were used splendidly in the sex scenes, and the scenes of euphoria. I also feel that something else is noteworthy, and that's the acting job where it's done in the second person alot. This is an intriging and underrated movie that is a good self-examination film. Fortunately, Faithfull's life did not turn out the way her character's did in this film.

This is a beautiful artistic film,definitely for those who appreciate vintage sixties films.Very rare marianne faithful movie,there is another version by anchor bay but has always been really expensive glad to see it has finally been re-issued.The Artwork is a lot better to,unlike the cheesy anchor bay cover,otherwise i highly recommend this film.

Beautiful Babe+Story+ Love+ Emotion+ Action+ Great Cinematography Back in 1960. Come on It has the Total Package. Certainly would have been an award winner if censors hadn't butchered it beyond recognition, thus crippling continuity. Fortunately I saw it in a first run unsensored un cut format-High Impact. Every bit Rebel Without A Cause/James Dean or Brando Era Stuff. Reviewers of the Day were to weak to buck mainstream uptight conservative Morays, and afraid of the Market/Studios Power on the whole. The movie was Very Reflective of the young people in the sixties and even those today, who are pushed like a peg in a hole in the main. Both influenced and expected to conform to majority ideals and opinions of their Elders as sheep. The Movie Well Exhibits Free Will, Free Expression and There Is Life being Lived. The Story, Portrayal, Acting and Filmwork were superb for a modest budgeted project. The action is good as any, and Ridership very good. Note the riding of onto the grass is far harder and more slippery as any rider can attest. As for wet roads that's a given. Not computer animation. Too Real; For Its Day I Found It Was Just Superb!