The Girl on a Motorcycle (1969)

She's Just Magical and Sparkling in this Role

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 ! June 7, 2007

This sounds like it could've been Faithfull's life in a nutshell

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.
October 13, 2006

A Beautiful European "Easy Rider"

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. April 20, 2005

Fun old-school trippy euro camp

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. August 16, 2004

For Real Motorcyclists

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! December 30, 2003

More reviews at Amazon.com ...