Peter Viney's Blog

Girl On A Motorcycle
1968

Directed by Jack Cardiff
Based on the novel by André Pieyre de Mandiargues
Screenplay by Ronald Duncan
Adapted by Jack Cardiff
Cinematography by Jack Cardiff
Thought sequence dialogue by Gillian Freeman

Music by Les Reed

CAST
Marianne Faithfull – Rebecca
Alain Delon – Daniel
Roger Mutton – Raymond
Marius Goring – Rebecca’s father
+
Catherine Jourdan – Catherine
Jean Leduc – Jean
No one else has a significant role. They couldn’t be bothered to find fictional names for Catherine and Jean either.

Release dates: September 1968

The 60s retrospectives series

I hadn’t noticed till I looked at the poster, but the executive producer was Ronan O’Rahilly, the owner of pirate radio station Radio Caroline.

According to Wiki, this was the 6th highest grossing film of 1968 in the UK. Really? The year of 2001, If, Charge of The Light Brigade, Yellow Submarine, Mayerling, Oliver!, The Lion In Winter, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? I found that hard to believe, BUT I remember going to see it, and I remember everyone I knew at university going to see it. I don’t remember anyone expressing admiration, though a spotty lad in my student residence saw it several times in a week.

What’s it about? Well, this is what it’s about:

original advert

It’s mainly about unzipping Marianne Faithfull’s very tight body hugging leather motorcycle leathers. It happens a lot. Yes, you do get to see more. I’ve been perplexed by fetishism in that neither leather clothing nor stocking tops have ever turned me on, but you get both here. You can add crotch shots bumping up and down on the bike and a lot of shapely rear end. Many of these were deleted from the heavily-censored 1968 version, but restored in the 1990s.It also had a re-issue under a different title, possibly for less-mainstream cinemas. It was the first X-film under the new rating system in 1968, but changing times mean the current DVD is a 15.

Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull as Rebecca

I’ve liked her since she warbled As Tears Go By. I bought the single. She is a survivor and in the last three decades has produced a series of mesmerising albums. She’s also an amusing raconteur. I loved her story of how she was at a party and both Bob Dylan and Gene Pitney were trying to hit on her and she chose Gene Pitney. Bad breath gets you nowhere, Bob.  In a later interview she mentioned sleeping with three Rolling Stones and got her revenge on ex-boyfriend Mick Jagger by stating that Keith was the best. In 1968 she was at the height of notoriety, known as Marijuana Faithfull to the tabloid readers. The Redlands drug bust at Keith Richards’ house was an appalling travesty. It was collusion between The News of The World and the Metropolitan Police to pervert the course of justice. Mysteriously, the News of The World contact and alleged supplier of the drugs in question was never charged and disappeared. To add prurience to perversion of justice, the journalists originated the Mars Bar myth, concerning an unusual and unhygienic way to store and consume confectionary. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Marianne Faithfull have all confirmed that it never happened, and I believe that none of them would have been bothered to deny it if it had. Whatever, Marianne Faithfull was “hot” in 1968. She wasn’t the first choice for the role of Rebecca, but she was the reason the film sold tickets.

Cult movie status

To be a cult movie, a film should be inept in some ways, and hard to find on video or DVD over many years. Girl On A Motorcycle certainly gained that status for both those reasons.

It combines blobby psychedelic screens with touches of naked flesh and roaring motorcycles. It ends in a crash and death … I can’t think that’s a plot spoiler because it was predictable about a minute into the movie. Its main claim to fame is that all three of these elements re-appear in the much greater film Easy Rider shortly afterwards.

A major difference is that Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper rode their own bikes competently, and met their end through gunshot rather than through careless riding whilst lost in sexual fantasy.

The bikes

Daniel (Alain Delon) teaches Rebecca (Marianne Faithfull) to ride a bike on a British Norton. Good classic bike. He gives her a Harley-Davison Elektra Glide. I’ll say no more for fear of upsetting American readers, especially any in motor cycle clubs.

Does it look real to you?

A major fault of the film is the ludicrously obvious back projection in the motorbike riding scenes. Sources claim that the film was innovative in filming her on the back of a moving truck … as is done nowadays with most driving sequences using a low-loader. Bollocks. They may have done a couple of sections, but mostly it’s back projection and in some shots you can see the cut-out halo effect this can cause. She never wears a helmet, nor does he. The riding on snow must have caused the film’s insurers serious fear, but I’d assume that mainly someone else is riding the bike in long shots.

Location

It was filmed in France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. The ending was filmed in England. We assume that Rebecca’s home is somewhere in Alsace, though her father’s bookshop was actually filmed in Geneva. She mentions at the German customs post that she likes to ride on German roads, not the narrow roads of Alsace. Her lover, Daniel, teaches at the university in Heidelberg in Germany, and much of the film is Rebecca travelling between Alsace and Heidelberg. I checked and it’s about 90 minutes by road which fits the plot well enough. However that sort of distance at high speed wouldn’t necessitate riding all night as she seems to, or for ages in the early dawn – I suppose the joy of empty roads would be the reason.

As to accents … well, who knows? Our lecturer at a German university speaks in heavily-accented French, while our supposedly French lead speaks precise convent school RP English. Raymonde appears to have French on the blackboard but speaks in English. Let’s say ‘They speak European.’

The plot

Let’s save time and cut and paste from my “French movie review template”

There are two men after one woman. She chooses the older and more sophisticated one.

Yep, that’s it. Done and dusted.

But seriously … it dots about all over the place in time, with a series of flashbacks interspersed with lengthy motorcycle travelogues around the Franco-German border. There are an incredible number of still photographs online.

Rebecca has a great deal of dreadful interior monologue:

Rebecca: Being married is a little death.

or

Rebecca: I fly towards you like a bird. No, a rocket flying towards the sun.

At the start we have a strange circus fantasy with Raymond as cellist, Daniel as ringmaster and Rebecca as the girl being whipped.

Rebecca (Marianne Faithfull) is newly-married to Raymond. Raymond is played by Roger Mutton, and no one ever advised him that a name change would be a positive career move. As they failed to name their friends, Jean and Catherine, I’d have kept Mr Mutton’s own name as it suits the character.

We see the married couple in bed, then we see Rebecca set off into the night on her large motorbike. She stops for petrol, gazes at the pump but doesn’t buy any and rides away. This happens at a BP station but then she rides away from an Aral station. She probably doesn’t like getting petrol on her leather gloves.

Raymond is a teacher who is unable to control an unruly class. A kid is waving a lit cigarette which he hides. You’d think a teacher would smell it.

Raymond is a crap teacher.

Never mind. . Raymond is being what we used to describe in teacher-training as “pinned to the blackboard” and does the losing thing … losing his temper.

There’s a lot of this. Do you reckon they used a stand in?

Rebecca’s road trip dissolves into a psychedelic Pink Floyd light extravaganza. Not LSD, just sexual fantasy.

Apparently sex has the same effect on Rebecca as hallucinatory drugs. Fair enough, cheap and legal.  She stops at French customs and has her bottom felt up by the customs officer.

Daniel (Alain Delon) has a flat with river view. Did his mum knit his top?

We see her with her lover, Daniel (Alain Delon) in his apartment over the river.

If she’s not tripping, she’s swooning.

Rebecca: You ought to tell me to shut up and do what you want to do.

On part of the trip she stops for a lie down in some leaves, as one does, and gets catcalled and wolf-whistled by a passing army convoy.

Switzerland. Raymond (Roger Mutton)… 

Raymond: My room is next to yours. Don’t lock the door tonight.

We cut to a skiing trip in Switzerland with Raymond. This will be earlier then, because they’re not yet married. They’re with two friends. Aprés-ski, in the restaurant, she’s chatting to Raymond, Jean and Catherine. A rugged chap at the bar is giving her the eye. we know he’s rugged because he’s got a pipe stuck in his mouth. Ah! This is Daniel.

We meet the pipe. With Daniel (Alain Delon)

It did seem an odd first meeting … but no! They have previous. We flash further back to her father (Marius Goring)’s bookshop. Rebecca is standing at the top of tall steps in a short skirt while Daniel is discussing an arcane tome with her dad.

Back to the restaurant. The two couples go upstairs. An aside on Swiss hotels in 1968. In some cantons it was illegal to allow unmarried couples to share hotel rooms, and hoteliers could be fined. I was told this by a colleague with a Swiss partner. I remarked that I had never thought of the Swiss as puritanical. ‘They’re not,’ he said, ‘But it means that unmarried couples have to pay for two rooms and do a midnight creep.’

Rebecca decides on appropriate nightwear for her first night with Raymond, having brought a selection of possibles.

Anyway, Jean’s midnight creep is instant. Rebecca goes in and tries to decide on nightwear. Sexy black with a plunging neckline, or perhaps wispy see-through white. She goes for the latter. Raymond arrives on his midnight creep, but Rebecca has changed her mind and pretends to be fast asleep.

Rebecca:(thinks) No, I can’t! What’s wrong with me? I can’t go through with it.

Raymond ruefully departs.

Daniel comes in through the balcony window in the dark. We don’t know how he got there, and surely it would have been an embarrassing move had Raymond succeeded earlier. They make love in the dark, and the whole sequence turns into a Pink Floyd blobby light show yet again. He disappears.

Rebecca: I knew you weren’t Raymond, but I’ve never been so happy.

She muses shortly afterwards that he knows her body better than anyone.

I remember when film makers used to show waves on a beach. Each to their own.

Mutton – sorry Raymond – comes back in the morning to tell her she’d been asleep. Ah, bless!

Raymond (Roger Mutton). He does look a trifle wet. I notice Daniel had left the balcony door open on a snowy night. A bit thoughtless.

We move on to Daniel offering to teach her to ride a motorcycle. Presumably later. Who cares? They ride out in the snow and find the hut he was aiming for is locked. Never mind the weather. Down on the snow they go. Off comes her top. Rather them than me.

We go to Heidelberg, where Daniel is giving a seminar to his students with pipe in hand. He is a pretentious prat (I mean both Daniel as a character, and Alain Delon as an actor here). He is discussing free love with the class philosophically. No one tells him he’s a prurient ageing bloke.

You see, Raymond, this bloke who came into the bookshop once or twice gave me a Harley Davison. Stocking tops for the non-leather fetishists.

We go to Rebecca’s wedding. She has an unusual gift from Daniel, a Harley Davison Elektra Glide bike. This of course will enable her to nip down to Heidelberg for a bit of rumpy-pumpy.

Daniel: A motor bike is closer to you than any human being.

If the road looks like this, I advise getting off the bike.

A long, very long bike sequence follows. Lots of pictures of speedometers too. She gets to Daniel’s flat. We get a lot of nudity (heavily made up bright red nipples on Delon) then that BANG! Propels her right into that Pink Floyd blobby light show thingy again. How does she do that? It must be most disconcerting.

Daniel’s flat. Discretely placed roses. I’d be worrying about the thorns.

This keeps happening to her!

Anyway, Daniel is emotionally cold (apart from screwing). She asks again about the lost love that he won’t talk about. But he won’t talk about it. What is the sadness that makes him sad? He would only get sad telling her about the sadness at the centre of his sad soul. That’s irritating. But hey, he’s a French professor. He’s read Sartre. All that existential angst is bullshit. Live with it.

She rides back and stops in a café. She has decided to leave Mr Mutton. Ein kirsch, bitte. Then another. The German customers ogle her. She imagines they’re mentally undressing her. I expect they are.

This German kirsch is stronger than you think.

Back on the bike, lost in sexual fantasy, tries to drive between vehicles. Wham bang. Ball of fire.

So children, do not dream of sex while riding a motorbike.

Helicopter shot of the accident scene … I told you Easy Rider was extremely similar.

Own up Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper- you had seen this.

The end. Helliwell’s film guide sums it up so neatly, I’ll give it the last word.

 An incredibly plotless and ill-conceived piece of sub-porn claptrap, existing only as a long series of colour supplement photographs.
Helliwell’s Film Guide.

The DVD

The DVD has no subtitle option, which was irritating because Alain Delon’s diction is dreadful. The sound on dialogue is poor, and the amateur, the pop singer, Marianne Faithful has better diction, projection and dare I say, acting ability, than her famous French co-star.

SOUNDTRACK

Les Reed is not a composer who springs to mind, but actually the soundtrack music is extremely effective.

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Performance (1970)