Welcome to 1968, and a burst of creative direction from one of the greatest film artists of the 20th century, Jack Cardiff. An attempt to make pop star Marianne Faithful into a cinematic sex symbol is an uphill struggle, even with Alain Delon playing opposite. Psychedelic effects are poured over a tale of desire that plays out in tony surroundings and out on the open road. Cardiff had a hand in the script, working for erotic effects. The American release recognized it as exploitation, and slapped on the more direct title ‘Naked Under Leather.’

The Girl on a Motorcycle
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1968 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 91 min. / Naked Under Leather / Street Date December 13, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Alain Delon, Marianne Faithfull, Roger Mutton, Marius Goring, Jacques Marin.
Cinematography: Jack Cardiff, René Guissart Jr.
Art Directors: Jean d’Eaubonne, Russell Hagg
Film Editor: Peter Musgrave
Leather Catsuit designer: John Sutcliffe
Original Music: Les Reed
Written by Ronald Duncan, Jack Cardiff from a novel by André Pieyre de Mandiargues
Produced by William Sassoon
Directed by Jack Cardiff

The superb cameraman Jack Cardiff was also a rugged outdoorsman and a ladies’ man; it was reported that the husband of Sophia Loren flew to a distant African location to head off a potential love affair. Cardiff’s directing career included the impressive classic Sons and Lovers, which was nominated for seven Oscars and won one. His other directing assignments bowed to commercial reality, replacing an ailing John Ford and lending energy (and viciousness) to action movies about bloodthirsty vikings and mercenaries.

1968’s The Girl on a Motorcycle wants to blend artistic cinematics and eroticism, but comes out as a soft-soft core exploitation picture. Jack Cardiff’s genius as a camera artist was the translation of psychological states into cinematic terms. The subject here is basic excitement and arousal, and the resulting film connected with audiences as a youth fantasy with a stellar cast. The concept came from a ‘hot’ novel by surrealist writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues. His idea of a girl in a one-piece leather outfit is said to originate with a female motorcycle racer he met. Attach the interesting, beautiful singer Marianne Faithful to the project, add the already notorious actor Alain Delon, and Cardiff had a show bound to attract some attention.

For the USA the title was changed to Naked Under Leather, which at least is technically accurate. Released just as the rating system was making nudity passable on American screens, it received a real national release, unlike the next year’s unlucky art / voyeur fest  Age of Consent,  a near masterpiece by another veteran Brit filmmaker, the legendary Michael Powell. ^*

The story is thin. Rebecca (Marianne Faithful) is married to the loving, devoted and terminally dull Raymond (Roger Mutton), a man approved by her father, a bookstore owner (Marius Goring, of several Michael Powell classics). In flashback we learn that Rebecca has taken a lover, Daniel (Alain Delon), a professor from a neighboring country, France. After visiting Daniel for a lovemaking session, Rebecca receives a gift, a new Harley Davidson Electra Glide motorcycle. Now she frequently dons a tight, form-fitting leather suit to ride the hundred miles or so across the border to be with Daniel.

That’s basically the whole show. The narrative consists of beautiful shots of Rebecca tooling through the countryside, stopping to eat, and interacting with the same curious or mildly disapproving border guards. This content is interrupted with free-form flashbacks to earlier episodes. We see Rebecca passing the time at a ski lodge with Raymond and his friends. Out of courtesy, the passive Raymond complies when Rebecca declines to sleep with him. She may take Daniel as her part-time lover because she secretly wants danger, to be treated more roughly. Offhand, this interpretation of the female yen for freedom feels shallow, and conceived from a male POV. Girls that want IT on their own terms, are fundamentally unstable.

It’s basic motorcycle movie algebra: riding + sexual choice equals freedom. A sexy blonde in a leather catsuit couldn’t be more liberated . . . in terms of a Guy Fantasy, anyway. We’re surprised that Rebecca encounters little in the way of harassment, when you’d think every other Frenchman would consider her ripe for conquest. If anything, les hommes are vaguely intimidated by Rebecca’s feminine power, as is the polite gas pump man played by noted French actor Jacques Marin.

Jack Cardiff’s approach to the ‘inner sex life’ of Marianne Faithful’s Girl is to soak her in a bath of surreal and psychedelic visual effects. The result is mostly standard-issue visual symbolism. In the very first scene he superimposes black birds around Rebecca. A disturbing feeling is created, but also the obvious idea that a ‘dark fate’ awaits her. During several bike rides Cardiff solarizes the image, converting realistic shots into color abstractions. These were of course more impressive in 1968 than they are now. Voyeuristic male moviegoers already knew the process well from fancy title sequences in spy films, where it was often used to flaunt censor-proof ‘stylized’ nudity.

We suspect that some of these color effects were produced on video, as the solarized images sometimes yield familiar horizontal line patterns. The solarization may also share the ‘spy movie’ logic, to stylize and abstract those direct images of bodies twisting and embracing.

Thus do some of the bike rides go psychedelic behind Les Reed’s music tracks, or audio of Rebecca or Daniel praising the free life, rebellion and independence. Standard images are reduced to flat patterns of color — an orange sky behind a blazing green Rebecca, perhaps. In ’68 these visual were also associated with the light shows that accompanied rock concerts. Cardiff’s psychedelics aren’t appreciably different from the acid trips in American-International’s youth/drug epics. They too fell back on goofball clichés and lazy symbolism.

The movie must rely on the limited appeal of Marianne Faithfull, who is of course a real beauty. She doesn’t project an arresting personality, and neither the story nor director Cardiff call on her to do much in the way of conventional acting. She does rides the motorbike for real now and then. Substitute riders are seen in long shots, and many close-ups utilize a bike attached to a truck, or perhaps actually in a truck bed.

For some shots, especially when Faithfull rides with Alain Delon, a standard travelling matte setup is used.  ↑  Although the composites are good the shots seem more in keeping with traditional Hollywood fakery. The technique reminds us of Debbie Reynolds on a scooter as The Singing Nun, not something hip & happening. Our realization in ’68 was that Girl wasn’t the way forward, just an old man’s idea of a liberated doll on a Harley.

As mild sexploitation The Girl on a Motorcycle soon hits the wall of respectable filmmaking, taking us no further into the liberated spirit of either the book source or the main character. Although the movie has a sex scene or two there’s nothing here that makes the film’s original ‘X’ Rating seem appropriate. Enough incidental nudity crops up to keep the skin hounds happy, but no real erotic charge or surreal effect are imparted.

The movie generally avoids embarrassing soft-erotic clichés, but one is a howler. The beautiful Daniel and Rebecca lie naked together before a large picture window . . . and somebody has placed a large flower arrangement in the middle of the frame, as a substitute fig leaf. It’s laughable, a genuine Austin Powers moment. ↓

On the other hand, if your fave fantasy is leather costumes, you’ve come to the right place. Marianne’s suit appears to have been tailored to her exact measurements — and then made half a size smaller.  The wool lining must make it feel like wearing a glove. The suit is fitted with a zipper attached to large finger ring, inviting us to peel her like a banana. A cutaway to the zipper in action momentarily achieves the erotic zing Cardiff is looking for.

Leotards and leather outfits weren’t always ‘predominantly S&M.’ They’ve been a part of film fantasy since at least Feuillade’s silent Les vampires. I once described John Phillip Law’s leather-clad  Diabolik  costume as a walking fetish. And of course there are memorable performances of Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns and Maggie Cheung in  Irma Vep. Hey, we might as well remind readers of the anarchic theme song Black Leather Rock  from  These are the Damned.

Curiously, Daniel doesn’t seem to be overly obsessed with Rebecca’s leather cat suit. The daring costume, the vehicle associated with sexual fantasies, the adulterous affair flaunting the rules of society — all are all there to express Rebecca’s rebellion. The only place she experiences a pure sensory orgasm seems to be out on the road — at least that what Rebecca’s rapturous face seems to say, along with Cardiff’s shots of her thighs wrapped tight around the Harley’s gas tank.

We receive the rebellion message in the first ten minutes of the film, and acknowledge Rebecca’s desires without knowing her well or having much of an opinion about her. With the characters so underwritten, we hang in there mainly to see where it’s all going. Oddly, the movie chooses a misogynistic finish that insists that Rebecca’s rebellion is bad news, that she is being punished for her sins. Film fans are more likely to be impressed that the wham-bam surprise shock finale is so similar to that of Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, which arrived a year later.

KL Studio Classics’ Blu-ray of  The Girl on a Motorcycle is touted as a new 4K scan, and it looks a bit brighter and a bit cleaner than the Kino/Jezebel disc from 2012. If what you’ve seen was made before 2012, this is going to look ten times better. Colors are bright and rich — the show seems filmed on the Franco- Swiss or Franco-German border, under perpetually overcast skies.

Jack Cardiff’s older commentary is still a good listen. It’s long on technical talk, with little attention to his career or how the movie came to be. I worked around Mr. Cardiff on an unreleased movie around 2003 and got to see him create some sensational visual effects for a title sequence, conjured out of literal smoke and mirrors. For a better appreciation of the artist’s amazing career, we strongly recommend Craig McCall’s documentary Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff.

A new commentary comes from Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, who begins by announcing that she’s going to speak to the topic of Bikers and Feminism. Later on she quotes Ms. Faithfull as admitting that all of her movies save for one Shakespeare adaptation were ‘ghastly.’ The commentary may not have been recorded to picture — it ends before the final scene.

A trailer is present as well.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Girl on a Motorcycle
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good +/-
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Commentary by Jack Cardiff, and by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas; trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case in card sleeve
Reviewed: December 12, 2022
(6849girl)
^*   Correspondent ‘B’ offers a correction: Warners first released the movie in New York as The Girl on a Motorcycle in November 1968, rated X. But they shelved it soon after. In May of 1970 the studio was in need of product and so brought it out wide, re-rated R and with the new title Naked Under Leather.

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