Motorcycle Emptiness? The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968)

 

This is a film from my youth… it was family viewing in the living room but I’m not sure we made it all the way through which intrigued me enough to watch it on my small black and white portable when it was screened by HTV in the early eighties… Of course, then I had no idea that the director and master of so many psychedelic visual effects, was none other than Jack Cardiff, previously a cameraman for Powell and Pressburger and so adept at enabling their magical realism.

With its theme of sexual infidelity, head versus heart and the visceral sexiness of motorcycling in nothing but a catsuit and boots, The Girl on a Motorcycle has often been reviewed as a guilty pleasure and there’s no end of references to sadomasochism, tapping into both the sexual freedoms of the time as well as the darker neo-Giallo elements and, of course, Bunel’s Belle du Jour and the works of Jess Franco and beyond.

The results are mixed but it’s a wild ride man that features direct-to-Sun camera shots that capture the same optical affects as the following year’s Easy Rider. The latter film may have been more directly linked to the youth movements of the time but there’s still something stirringly free and risky about a blonde on a motor bike whether he’s called Peter or Marianne, albeit mostly played by British Grand Prix motorcycle champion Bill Ivy, blonde wig not quite convincing as he speeds around the country roads on a Harley Davidson Electra.

Marianne Faithful and the Harley

Based on the 1963 novel La Motocyclette by André Pieyre de Mandiargues the film was released as Naked Under Leather and was the first film to receive an X rating in the United States, clearly on purpose. “Racy” was on the mission statement and using, pop singer and girlfriend of at least one Rolling Stone as the lead character, Rebecca was obviously considered a masterstroke. Faithful had already appeared in I’ll Never Forget Whatsisname (1967) with Oliver Reed and would go on to feature in Tony Richardson’s Hamlet (1969) with the great Nicol Williamson, Anthony Hopkins and Judy Parfitt.

So, she could act without doubt but she was also from the intelligentsia and, as coincidence would have it, related to the Leopold von Sach-Masoch, her great-great uncle, who wrote Venus in Furs and, of course, coined the term, Masochism. Marianne was later found wearing only a fur rug by the police when they raided Keith Richard’s house looking for drugs. All a far cry from the catholic convent schoolgirl who also lived in Ormskirk for a while growing up as her father completed his doctorate at Liverpool University; you could have stuck around and met George or Ringo?

Anyway, here she’s a posh young thing trying to escape the expectations of her father Marius Goring, an academic bookseller who would much rather she stayed and helped with the family business than run off and marry young musician Raymond (Roger Mutton, here dressed as lamb…) but there is far worse to come sir.

Alain Delon and Marianne

From the film’s opening Rebecca is dreaming of Daniel (Alain Delon) a sexy but distanced academic who she met as he browsed her father’s shelves looking for a volume to meet his needs. Daniel is dreamy but also devilish, looking at the young woman’s derriere when he really should be paying attention. He is interested in sexuality and not so much romance whereas Raymond has more mundane things on his mind and is about as sensual as a semi-quaver. Rebecca thinks of her first encounter with Daniel and the cruel excitement he offers has her dreaming of him as a circus ring master driving his motorbike around Raymond as he attempts to entertain the crowd with his feeble cello.

Cue, sequence of Rebecca on a black horse, leaving the circus tent and heading into the psychedelic outdoors, total sexual and bodily freedom and an inspiration that, as soon as she wakes up she resolves to visit her lover in Germany, hours away from the stultifying marital home in boring Belgium. The film features long monologues from Rebecca as she contemplates her seismic reunion with Danielle, pulling on only her fur-lines leather jacket and leather boots as she takes out her bike and roars off to the border through the suburbs that, even after a few months of marriage, already wear her down.

She has travelled this way many times before, never able to resist the lure of Daniel for long and encounters leering pump attendants, touchy-feely customs officers and one less lecherous, who she assumes is “queer” … naturally. But, comments of their time apart, Rebecca is celebrating her sexuality and is planning her reunion down to the last detail; she must arrive around 8am when he will be in his garden room and surprised as he will be to see her, they will renew their physical bond with an intensity far beyond what she has experienced with her ill-chosen husband.

On and on she rides and back she goes in a reverie to their romantic history and those intense moments and before the audience can be too disapproving of her leather-clad sensuality, there are those constant reminders of how men, generally, view women who are sexually present… a squad of soldiers cheering when they find her resting on a bench, not wanting to be too early for Daniel. The closer she gets the more we learn of his instructing her on his fine British bike, a Norton, having liberated her, despite his own romantic detachment, his still broken heart, he makes her into a motorcyclist and then sends her the Harley as a wedding gift… knowing full well that she will only use it to return to him.

Dusty verdict: Girl on a Motorcycle looks, mostly, gorgeous but there are a few too many odd shots of Faithful cavorting on a bike raised up on the back of a truck; the technology wasn’t quite there to show her riding in ecstasy actually on the road. There’s also a predictability about the direction of travel and the feeling that she will pay for all this freedom and sexuality even as the audience, mostly and not including that German border guard, enjoy Marianne’s beauty.

The film’s other issue is that despite Marianne and despite Alain, it isn’t that sexy especially with dialogue like 'Your body is like a violin in a velvet case…”, oh… “skin me!” There’s an awkwardness between the two leads in places and their flame burns brightest when Daniel is teaching her how to drive not unzipping her catsuit like a banana.

Cardiff’s psychedelic sequences and his gift for capturing landscape make it a visual feast yet maybe there was too much convent school left in Marianne. At least in this context… Mick would have a completely different take…

Alain abides...