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...

 

I might… I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967)

Oliver Reed is spotted right at the start with a sharp metal axe on his shoulder, walking purposefully through the West End towards what looks like the old Economist building off Piccadilly. As the titles roll he’s bounding through busy 1967 streets with hardly a second glance from the mass of pedestrians around him.

He enters the offices of Lute Advertising, makes his way up to his office and then wields the axe, destroying his desk, chair, filing cabinets in a few devastating movements… he has had this job and wants something more “honest”: “silly boy,” says his boss Mr Lute (Orson Welles), “There aren’t any…” as he aims a golf ball from the agency’s roof garden in eth direction of their competitors.

But Reed’s character, Andrew Quint, is not for turning so easily, he’s exceptionally good at his job but wants to escape and, despite Lute’s conviction that he’ll be back, he goes to work for his old friend Nicholas (Norman Rodway) who runs a worthy but barely profitable literary magazine. The pay is hardly worth mentioning but it’s honest work… what he wanted to do rather than what he ended up doing and being successful at…

Orson and Oliver

This may be a period piece but the central quandary has never dated. Michael Winner directs as he did for The Jokers, Reed’s earlier film in which mainstream values were questioned. Hard to think of the director of Death Wish as this challenging but Winner had been editor of Varsity magazine at Cambridge in the fifties and maybe there was some autobiography here? Quint even goes to Cambridge to meet one of the magazine’s contributors.

This film is not as slapstick as The Jokers and indeed is rather more serious as it progresses: there are no easy answers for Mr Quint nor Mr Winner…

Quint’s a man on the run, not just from his own success but also from his family and his wife, Louise (Wendy Craig) – the two still seem very connected but almost casually falling apart. She’s seeing other men more in retaliation to his constant search for a new sexual partner. Even when Quint meets someone he likes he’s still eyeing up the competition…   he cannot settle and is distracted by the “advertising” on view.

He goes to visit model Josie (Marianne Faithfull) sneaking peeks at her in the bath and then rendezvous with the married Susannah  (Lyn Ashley) at a disused signal box… oh Thomas Beaching, so much to answer for?

Carol White and Ollie

He’s detached form them all with the exception of his wife – who not only understands him but herself as well – watched a lot of Antonioni did you Mr Winner? Nothing at all wrong with that.

It’s too easy to overlook Reed’s acting chops given his later Brando-esque  reliance on his presence (Mr Welles also provides a fine example of the same…) and here he is very good with a far more nuanced and lonely character than in his two previous Winner films.

In this moment Quint wants to find himself through intellectual work, escaping the get-rich certainties his creative talent brings him in advertising. There’s a pretty young secretary, Georgina Elben (Carol White) who naturally attracts his attention but she’s wary of his love ‘em and leave ‘em baggage…

The two grow closer and – for some reason – Quint decides to invite her to his school reunion. It’s an all-male audience of course – and Georgina stands out like and attractive young woman amongst the dinner-jacketed old boys. It’s horrible… and the men revert to easily to type as their former teachers forget their names and jumble up anyone who had an ounce of individuality… no doubt all heartfelt stuff for Winner and his writer Peter Draper.

Carol White and Norman Rodway

Quint is still suffocated by his privileged background and still unable to make lasting human connections – gee, it sure is tough being a public schoolboy with an imagination.

There’s a nice turn from Michael Hordern as the bumbling headmaster – of course such a man would be in charge of a fee-paying school… he never forgets a face and a name only he can’t always remember the two together correctly: emblematic of an  indifferent establishment.

Some of the boys, led by the uber-obnoxious Charles Maccabee (Harvey Hall), spot on old victim and decide to renew their bullying. As they chase the poor fellow through the grounds, Quint steps in and fights back only to end up the worse for wear…

Georgina takes him back to her apartment where, in his delirious state, he has vivid dreams of his school life in which Frank Findlay as an inappropriate Chaplain fills his head full of poison… Waking with Georgina he allows genuine emotion to seep through…

Marianne Faithfull

The two travel to Cambridge together to meet recalcitrant author, Gerald Sater(Harry Andrews) who is late with his work but all too willing to deliver in return for a pay rise and the chance for a pervy flirt with Georgina as he shows her his collection of what the butler saw viewers…

The couple return to London to find that Nicholas, urged on by his long-suffering wife, Carla (Ann Lynn) has sold out to a mysterious third party. Of course it’s Lute just trying to get his man back and it may appear he has succeeded as Quint agrees to produce one last advert that will lay open the dishonesty of his profession once and for all.

He makes his statement, pulling in genuine statements and reactions from his lovers and ex-wife and yet he may not get the result he hopes for: in this world of sacrifice and “new clothes” who knows what anything will mean to anyone?

The films closes out in far darker tones than you’d expect and indeed is far more serious than Reed and Winner’s previous collaborations…both would have to step off in order to free themselves of the World defining their worth and their work…

Dusty verdict: The film has some very good moments and the performances from Black, Craig and Reed are especially impressive.

Maybe the central premise rings a bit hollow but then few of us ever really escape the trap of making money from jobs we’re quite good at: we can’t always chose how to make a living apart from the fact that most of us end up exactly where we’re meant to be in terms of our skill sets.

Not everyone can break free to find a plan B…

Then film is available on DVD from Amazon and other reputable suppliers.