A lot of fun.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

I saw this film in the 1970s at a Cleveland Drive-in, then titled "Naked under Leather", and enjoyed it as a peculiarly big-name (stars in the cast) exploitation film. I later have realized it was perhaps the first of its kind and influential.Of course, it is compared to Easy Rider, though predating that hit by a year. The use of the road movie format to present an existentialist story was later to reach its apotheosis in 1971 with Monte Hellman's "Two-Lane Blacktop" and Richard C. Sarafian's major cult classic "Vanishing Point", the last-named becoming my favorite film of the time. I even bought a Dodge Challenger and enjoyed watching "VP" and other similar movies at the drive-in sitting in my favorite car.This Jack Cardiff original is being revived at the New York Public Library upon the suggestion of staff from Film Comment magazine, so it's due to be taken seriously. My problems with the film are worth this short review.Similar works by French authors were quite popular at the time, my choice being Sebastian Japrisot's "The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun", a strange work that was filmed twice, the first one being vastly underrated: Jean Negulesco's glossy movie starring Samantha Eggar and Oliver Reed.Cardiff adapted the screenplay and rather adventurously presents the story almost exclusively in voice-over from the heroine's point-of-view: much of the action is mere fantasy on her part. Mick Jagger's girlfriend at the time, singer Marianne Faithfull, stars, and the movie unfolds almost as a love letter to her - endless closeups and enough smiles for her to audition for The Sound of Music.The director in his commentary emphasizes the participation of Alain Delon as her co-star: a subordinate role but crucial as he was the top leading man in Europe for the 1960s. But Cardiff is off-base in his self-praise for the frequent use of positive/negative post-production alteration of the visuals, that create a "psychedelic" effect intended to fend off the censors. The technique is crude and ineffective. Similarly, his yeoman work to disguise the fact that Faithfull cannot ride a bike, let alone a magnificent Harley at high speeds, goes for naught -most of the footage looks fake or clearly second unit (with a stunt guy doubling for the beauty).But as an experiment its power continues, even to the extent of the Tom Hardy one-man-show "Locke", which I thought was imitating "Vanishing Point" with its protagonist behind the wheel for an hour and a half, but owes more to Cardiff's single-minded creation.And the sex that earned the movie an X-rating (though at a time when X rated movies included "Midnight Cowboy") is more of the fetish kind. You know, the British kink for rubber and leather and such, best epitomized in the '60s by Diana Rigg's fabulous fetish outfits in the hit TV series "The Avengers".We get to see tasteful nude shots of Marianne, which now should prove amusing to her fan base as she morphed from Jagger's ""As Tear Go By" to a fine, mature folk singer over the years, and an emphasis on her leather costume that puts to shame the thousands of ridiculous bondage/fetish videos that clutter up this IMDb database (search for odd-ball names under the Genre "Adventure" and you'll find them.

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.

This 1968 film is often dismissed as being a joke, but compare a lot of the scenes, filmed by Jack Cardiff of 'The Vikings' fame, to the now legendary 'Easy Rider', filmed a year later. The similarities are too close to be accidental, especially at the end where the camera pans back and up into the air, surveying the autobahn crash scene from above, to the ending of 'Easy Rider' alongside the Florida levy. Another scene features Marianne roaring her Harley-Davidson Electra Glide past horses, coincidental with scenes from 'Easy Rider'. It's not beyond reason that seasoned motorcyclists like Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper would have seen 'Girl on a motorcycle', and been influenced by the cinematography. If you are a Harley-Davidson enthusiast, you will probably cherish this film for the fine motorcycles featured, namely the aforementioned 1967 Harley-Davidson, while smirking at the ludicrous upright posture of Marianne while apparently riding the motorcycle. I own a very similar machine, and can only marvel at the skill of the stuntman who actually bullied the brute through twisty, damp, oily country lanes, at a real speed that makes my socks roll up and down in panic just watching it!

Motorcyclist Perspective From a Motorcyclist Perspective I enjoyed this film. The European landscape and a hot, leather clad, horny babe on a FL Harley-Davidson American motorcycle really turned my crank. This is a classic with a lot of riding scenes this is the type of material I crave to digest when I am not on my motorcycle, a kind of substitute ride if you will. Sexy women wrapped in tight leather are you kidding why not give this film a ten it is the greatest.I would compare it to Easy Rider only a female version I bet Peter Fonda saw this film and was then inspired to make Easy Rider. I put this in my top ten list of motorcycle saturated films. I saved it on my DVR and will watch it again and again and encourage every other motorcyclist to do the same. It even had the psychedelic visuals like Easy Rider. I wish someone would remake a modern version of Girl on a Motorcycle.