‘The Girl on a Motorcycle’: The bizarre erotic psychedelic movie starring Marianne Faithfull
There was a period during that hazy swinging era of the 1960s and into the early 1970s when psychedelic cinema took hold with mind-bending visuals that gave the impression that you were tripping on acid, coming to appear in both underground and mainstream productions.
Easy Rider is a big one, with its disorientating graveyard acid trip sequence, although you can’t forget the psychedelic era of The Beatles, which resulted in hallucinatory films like Yellow Submarine. From modest productions like Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush to more experimental numbers like Daisies and the bogglingly surreal The Holy Mountain, these movies were defined by bright colours and swirling visual effects, which doused you in harsh contrasts and sickeningly vibrant palettes that gave the effect of being under lyseric influence.
In this, the most peculiar oddity from this era is The Girl on a Motorcycle, also known by its more provocative title, Naked Under Leather, which emerged in 1968 from director Jack Cardiff, starring pop singer and Rolling Stone associate Marianne Faithfull as the titular leather-clad heroine who finds herself bored with her marriage. So bored, in fact, that she hops on her motorcycle and journeys off to meet her lover, who is none other than the charismatic Alain Delon.
The iconic French actor actually seems incredibly out of place here, appearing as little more than a bit on the side with not much of a personality. In fact, it’s quite the role reversal; he is given little more to do than look handsome, and in one after-dark instance, be incredibly creepy. It wasn’t much of a success for Delon back home, but the movie did become a massive hit in the United Kingdom and the United States.
While the French might be a bit more sophisticated when it comes to matters of erotics, the words ‘Marianne Faithfull’, ‘naked’, ‘motorcycle’ and ‘leather’ were perhaps enough to sell the film to English and American audiences by the boatloads, and naked under leather she is. We see the singer bare all as she slips into her skin-tight black outfit and boots, her makeup impeccable and her blonde hair unaffected by her helmet, and she becomes the ultimate vision of cool as she rides off in her quest for freedom from her loveless marriage.
It’s a bizarre film, though, with Faithfull’s character often laughing rather maniacally to herself as she drives, and there’s not a whole lot of anything that she gets done other than riding her motorcycle or making love. The psychedelic visuals are interesting because they feel like such an utter time capsule of the period, only occurring occasionally and seemingly with little real necessity. This isn’t a drug film in the slightest, yet when you least expect it, you’ll see the trees turn neon pink and Faithfull’s face a lurid, sickly colour as birds stretch across a sky behind her painted in purples and green.
There isn’t much substance to The Girl on a Motorcycle, but there is certainly charm to Faithfull’s character, who, while rather one-dimensional, you can’t help but love. I think that’s just because it’s Faithfull, though, whose effortlessly stylish and sensuous appearance in the film buoys the narrative.
In all honesty, it’s not the most thrilling film, but it stands as a reminder of a period in cinema where pop stars were taking on rather experimental film roles just because they could (Mick Jagger would soon follow with Performance). It was scandalous, becoming the first movie to receive an X-rating in the United States, and Faithfull’s pairing with Delon suggested that this was a serious endeavour.
Whatever it was, it was fun, with carefully considered cinematography making for at least a beautifully psychedelic piece of cinema. There are some great shots when Faithfull and Delon are laid naked by a massive rainy window, and the scenes illuminated in red decor and lighting are equally as gorgeous. With a shocking end, The Girl on a Motorcycle might not be the finest work in cinema history, but it’s certainly an enjoyably bizarre one.
