SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Martin Bradley Cult movies don't come much 'cultier' than "The Girl on a Motorcycle". This film was British in name only; fundamentally it was French through and through from its source novel, (La Motocyclette by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues), to its leading actor, Alain Delon. Pop singer Marianne Faithful, naked but for a black leather jump suit, was really only standing in for Bardot. There's no real plot to speak of but there's a lot of sixties psychedelia, sex, nudity, cheesy dialogue (Your body is like a violin in a velvet case), and, of course, Faithful tearing along the highways and byways of Europe on a big, phallic motorbike to the bed of her lover, Delon.The director was a somewhat unlikely Jack Cardiff whose superb cinematography also gives the film its texture. Faithful's non- performance is really rather appealing while the film itself is ripe for rediscovery. It's not actually very good but it's certainly weird enough to be of more than passing interest.

jotix100 The great Jack Cardiff was an exceptional cinematographer before his career as a director. "The Girl on a Motorcycle", which came out in 1968, was an attempt to work on a genre that was popular at the time. After all, everything back then was psychedelic and mod. The film is based on a French novel that probably was better than the adaptation by the director and Ronald Duncan.Starting with the opening credits, we are taken along for a ride through some of the most scenic areas of France, Germany and Switzerland. At the center of the story is Rebecca, a luscious young woman trapped into a loveless marriage. Her recollection of the great love affair she had with Daniel, is the excuse for the road trip. In flashbacks we are told the missing details of Rebecca and Daniel's romance and torrid encounters. Unfortunately, there is little substance to the story because the road trip is more interesting than the sum of its parts.It has been noted that Alain Delon was given top billing in the film, when the real star is Marianne Faithful, a singer with an attractive face and gorgeous body. Ms. Faithful's Rebecca comes across as a woman who has no clue as to what to do with her life. The Daniel of Alain Delon is not one of his best creations because the director makes him an interesting figure, which in reality, he is not. Marius Goring has nothing to do as the father of Rebecca.

AZINDN A dated film with solarization, hip music, and the ultimate "it girl" Marianne Faithful as The Girl on a Motorcycle, this is a flashback tale with a 1968 pre-Easy Rider meets Barbarella setup. Rebecca is a French woman who abandons her marital bed in the middle of the night, slips on a skin tight black leather Lanvin jumpsuit, and mounts a huge Harley-like hog to ride to Heidelberg and meet her lover, a professorial Alain Delon, who will ravage her with long stemmed roses and mild S/M sex. While she travels, she fantasizes about sex, memory, and dull Raymond, a teacher and cuckold husband versus Delon.Filmed in 1968 when the notorious relationship of Faithful and Mick Jagger was the media topic, Girl on a Motorcycle brings back the notion of good women as sexually subservient to their men, and marriage as the only recourse of respectable young girls. Delon was a perfect debaucher by stealing the virginal Rebecca from her father's bookstore for a bike ride to "get the color in her cheeks." Her dull fiancé/husband remains ignorant to his wife's wilder adventures and her desire and enthusiastic willingness to have a pre-marital fling before the pending marriage. With border guards hands on harassing of Rebecca, this film is a slice of why the women's movement was so timely in the 70s as the notion of a lone woman riding the roads through France and Germany must have been as shocking as free-love, drugs, and the Rolling Stones to conventional society. But because she transgresses the limits of propriety, Rebecca must pay with the ultimate sacrifice in a traditional morality story of lust, leather, and booty on a bike.

arotolante I feel I must comment on what aimless-46 said in his (or her) review:"The ending is a bit of a puzzle; after the accident they pull up from the scene to a wide aerial shot and you expect the movie to go out on this shot (copied for "Easy Rider's" ending), which would have been very effective. Instead they cut to a travelogue-like scene of a European village and go to credits after about 60 seconds of this stuff. It serves no purpose other than to deflate any lasting impact."Actually the ending is quite clear and extremely effective!Earlier in the film, Rebecca daydreams about seeing her lover at 8am. As the clock chimes 8 in Heidelberg, we see Rebecca on her motorcycle traveling the road, parking her bike, running up the garden path to the gazebo and falling into Daniel's arms. She is then pulled out of her daydream (I believe by the tank full of soldiers driving past her on the road) and continues with her "real" travel to her lover.At the end of the film, this scene is played out again. Once the camera pulls away from Rebecca's crash, we hear the clock begin to chime 8 in Heidelberg. The camera focuses in on the clock, then revisits the same locations that Rebecca had imagined in her daydream, only she is not there. There is a sadness as we see the deserted road where she imagined she would travel, the place where she would have parked her bike, the empty garden path and the gazebo. We see the void she has left behind due to the carelessness leading to her horrible (yet spectacular) crash. And the viewer can't help but be reminded of how she told Daniel the last time they met that she would never come to him again. One wonders how he will take the news of her death, or if he will find out about it at all. Basically it's a meditation on loss and it's really quite moving.By the way, it's impossible to see this film and not get the metaphor of a teenage girl's dark sexual awakenings as embodied in the wedding gift of a motorcycle from her lover.A groovy soundtrack, leather, whips, motorcycle races, Alpine skiing, free love, fondue, Marianne Faithful getting lashed by a dozen thorny red roses - what a film! Thank you, Mr. Cardiff!