“She is a happening all to herself.”

by Kimberly Lindbergs | May 15, 2009

Categories | Actors, British Cinema, Actresses, Alain Delon, 1968, Bikers, Marianne Faithfull, Girl On a Motorcycle, Jack Cardiff

The October 1968 issue of ABC Film Review features a great piece by Philip Bradford about the making of Jack Cardiff’s Girl On A Motorcycle. In the article the movie’s two stars (Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon) briefly discuss what it was like to work with one another on the film. I thought it would be fun to share their quotes here along with some lovely still shots of them together on the set. I assume that most (if not all) of these photographs were taken by Jack Cardiff himself but if anyone knows otherwise, please feel free to let me know.

Alain Delon on Marianne Faithfull:
"She is a happening all to herself. She is the type of girl men fought dragons for in mythology, the type that duels have been fought over."

Marianne Faithfull on Alain Delon:
"We think alike in a lot of ways and he’s a totally dedicated actor. He helped me a lot through his ability to ignore outside things when he’s working. You have to keep cool when you’re filming. Shooting intimate love scences with swarms of technicians around you - for that you really need to learn to concentrate.  You have to shut off everyone else and make a world in which there are only two people."

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Cinema Retro #14

by Kimberly Lindbergs | May 13, 2009

Categories | News, Cinema Retro, Alain Delon, Marianne Faithfull, Girl On a Motorcycle, Jack Cardiff

In a unexpected coincidence the newest issue of Cinema Retro has just been published and it features a terrific in-depth article on Jack Cardiff’s 1968 film Girl On a Motorcycle by Dean Brierly. It’s definitely one of the most detailed pieces about Cardiff’s film that I’ve come across and it contains many beautiful images from the movie as well. After Cardiff passed away recently I was surprised by the lack of attention given to the film’s he directed in the numerous obits I read so it’s great to see Girl On a Motorcycle getting some much deserved critical consideration and praise. If you’re a fan of the film or just interested in the movie and Cardifff’s directing efforts, the latest issue of Cinema Retro is well worth picking up!

The latest issue also features great interviews with the American actors James Caan, Ernest Borgnine and Harry Northup as well as actress Karen Black, articles on various Michael Winner films including the great Charles Bronson vehicle Chato’s Land (1972) and one of my favorite horror films from the ’70s, The Sentinel (1977). You’ll also find a brief piece about the early films made by Clint Eastwood (The Beguiled, Play Misty for Me and Breezy), which I enjoyed reading since his early horror films are often overlooked and I believe that The Beguiled and Play Misty for Me are two of Clint Eastwood’s best movies.

You’ll find a lot more worthwhile reading in the new issue of Cinema Retro so head on over to the Cinema Retro site where you can order yourself a copy of issue #14 online or subscribe to the magazine: Cinema Retro

All of my own posts related to The Girl On a Motorcycle can be accessed here and I’ll try and share a bit more about the film before it’s upcoming DVD re-release on May 19th.

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Girl On a Motorcycle: The Soundtrack

by Kimberly Lindbergs | April 28, 2009

Categories | Soundtracks, Composers, 1968, Girl On a Motorcycle, John Barry

Composer Les Reed

One of the best things about Jack Cardiff’s 1968 film The Girl on a Motorcycle is the terrific score created by the award winning British composer and songwriter Les Reed. Les Reed was one of the most prolific members of the mid-60s London music scene and he’s probably familiar to most people thanks to the success of popular songs he wrote and arranged for other artists. Reed often worked with other songwriters like Geoff Stephens and Barry Mason, and these creative partnerships yielded many hit songs.

Here’s a short list of some of the songs that were composed and/or arranged by Les Reed and performed by the recording artists who made them popular (links should take you to YouTube clips for each song):

Tom Jones - “It’s Not Unusual”
Herman’s Hermits - “There’s a Kind of Hush”
Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders - “Game of Love”
The Drifters - “Hello Happiness”
The Fortunes - “Here It Comes Again”
The Dave Clark Five - “Everybody Knows”
The Applejacks - “Tell Me When”
Petula Clark - “Kiss Me Goodbye”
Lulu - “Leave A Little Love”
Elvis Presley - “Sylvia”
Engelbert Humperdinck - “The Last Waltz”
Mireille Mathieu - “Les Bicyclettes De Belsize”

The John Barry Seven with Les Reed on the piano

Les Reed came from a musical family and trained at London’s prestigious College of Music. In 1958 he began playing piano with renowned composer John Barry and his touring band the John Barry Seven. This partnership lasted until 1962 and during that time Reed worked with John Barry on the soundtracks for Beat Girl (1959), Never Let Go (1960) and the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962). But it wasn’t until 1968 that Les Reed would get the opportunity to compose and record his first film score for Jack Cardiff’s The Girl On a Motorcycle.

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The Girl on a Motorcycle: Advertising

by Kimberly Lindbergs | April 23, 2009

Categories | British Cinema, Alain Delon, Bikers, Marianne Faithfull, Girl On a Motorcycle, Jack Cardiff

There were a lot of beautiful posters designed for Jack Cardiff’s film when it was originally released. Unfortunately I don’t know the names of all the artists who created these posters and ads for The Girl On a Motorcycle (1968), but I hope you enjoy this collection of images. I had to restore and touch-up many of the posters so its been somewhat of a labor of love for me to share these, but well worth the effort. Enjoy!

Poster art from the British release of the film.

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Some Thoughts on Jack Cardiff 1914-2009

by Kimberly Lindbergs | April 22, 2009

Categories | News, Directors, British Cinema, Alain Delon, Bikers, Marianne Faithfull, Girl On a Motorcycle, Jack Cardiff, Featured

Jack Cardiff with Marianne Faithfull on the set of The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968)

The talented director and cinematographer Jack Cardiff has passed away at the age of 94. As the tributes start to roll out from various news sites and film blogs its become clear to me that most people regard Jack Cardiff as a great cinematographer and have little regard or knowledge of his directing contributions, which is a shame. Cardiff was a brilliant photographer and his groundbreaking contributions to cinematography are well worth celebrating. But his impressive work as a director on films like the wonderful D.H. Lawrence adaptation Sons and Lovers (1960), the entertaining spy thriller The Liquidator (1965), the excellent erotic drama The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) and the effective horror film The Mutations (1974) is also worthy of applause. READ MORE

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My Top 20 Favorite Films of 1968

by Kimberly Lindbergs | October 6, 2008

Categories | 1968, Girl On a Motorcycle

At the Britannica blog Raymond Benson has finished listing off his Top 10 Favorite Films of 1968 so if you’re interested in the final results stop by and give them a look. I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions how much I dislike making lists of favorite films myself since they’re limited by what I’ve seen and are subject to change at anytime. Roger Ebert recently asked his blog readers to “. . . agree that all lists of movies are nonsense.” I agreed with him wholeheartedly at the time, but in the process of watching Raymond Benson share his list favorite films from 1968 I naturally began thinking of my own favorite films released the same year.

Compiling a list of favorite films restricted by their release date without implying that they’re “the best” (whatever that means) started to seem like a fun exercise. And while reading the complaints and reservations about Raymond Benson’s own selections I even suggested that it would be interesting if all the participants of the Britannica blog “round-table” supplied their own list of Top 10 Favorite Films for 1968 so we could compare them. I figured that if we were going to scrutinize Raymond Benson’s selections we might as well scrutinize each other. I also thought that it would probably enrich the discussion. No one else seemed willing or able to share a list of there own picks, but for the past two weeks I’ve been quietly compiling a list of my own favorite films from 1968.

I wasn’t planing on sharing my own list with anyone, but over the weekend I listened to an interesting discussion between Greencine’s David Hudson, Film Comment’s Gavin Smith and film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum about the current state of film criticism that got me contemplating my list again. During the discussion Jonathan Rosenbaum smartly pointed out that, “People love lists now because they need to. There’s too much to navigate through.” In my own experience I’ve found this to be very true. Since I started blogging my “Favorite DVDs of the year” lists for 2006 and 2007 have become some of my most popular posts and they’ve generated some lively discussions and lots of email. I think other people appreciate them because they offer a brief look at some films I’ve enjoyed and recommend. And in the words of Jonathan Rosenbaum, the lists are easy to navigate through.

So without further explanation, here’s a list of some of my own favorite films from 1968. I couldn’t manage to narrow all my choices down to a mere Top 10 so I just decided to share my Top 20 list instead. I purposefully left off documentaries so you won’t find any listed and four of the films on my list were also on Raymond Benson’s list. The numerical order doesn’t mean much and naturally my list is subject to change at anytime since I’m continually being exposed to new movies. It also should be noted that after looking at various print and online sources I’ve come across different release dates for some films. As far as I know, the following 20 films were originally released in 1968.

My TOP 20 FAVORITE FILMS OF 1968

1. If…. (Lindsay Anderson; 1968)
Some of my thoughts about If…. can be found HERE and HERE.

2. Black Lizard aka Kurotokage (Kinji Fukasaku; 1968)
Some of my thoughts about Black Lizard can be found HERE.
I’m currently working on a much longer article about the film and its star that I hope to share here soon.

3. Spirits of the Dead aka Histoires Extraordinaires
(Federico Fellini, Louis Malle & Roger Vadim; 1968)
Some of my thought about Spirits of the Dead can be found HERE.

4. Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini; 1968)
Some of my thoughts about Teorema can be found HERE.

5. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick; 1968)

6. Diabolik aka Danger: Diabolik! (Mario Bava; 1968)
Some of my brief thoughts about Diabolik can be found HERE.

7. Succubus aka Necronomicon - Geträumte Sünden (Jesus Franco; 1968)
Some of my thoughts about Succubus can be found HERE.

8. The Great Silence aka Il Grande silenzio (Sergio Corbucci; 1968)
Some of my thought about The Great Silence can be found HERE and HERE.

9. Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski; 1968)

10. Petulia (Richard Lester; 1968)
Some of my thoughts about Petulia can be found HERE.

11. Blackmail Is My Life aka Kyokatsu koso Waga Jinsei ( Kinji Fukasaku; 1968)
Some of my thoughts about Blackmail Is My Life can be found HERE

12. Boom! (Joesph Losey; 1968)
My lengthy look at Boom! can be found HERE.

13. Night of the Living Dead (George Romero; 1968)

14. The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison; 1968)
Some of my thoughts about The Thomas Crown Affair can be found HERE.

15. Girl on a Motorcycle aka Naked Under Leather (Jack Cardiff; 1968)
Some of my thoughts about Alain Delon and Girl on a Motorcycle can be found HERE.

16. Once Upon a Time in the West aka C’era una volta il West
(Sergio Leone; 1968)
Some of my thoughts about Once Upon a Time in the West can be found HERE.

17. Death Laid an Egg aka La Morte ha fatto l’uovo (Giulio Questi; 1968)
I briefly mentioned my fondness for Death Laid an Egg HERE.

18. The Devil Rides Out aka The Devil’s Bride (Terence Fisher; 1968)

19. Stolen Kisses aka Baisers volés (François Truffaut; 1968)

20. Barbarella (Roger Vadim; 1968)

Honorable mention goes to the wonderful Yokai Monster films that I wrote about a few weeks ago.

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My Love Affair With Alain Delon

by Kimberly Lindbergs | May 20, 2007

Categories | Actors, French Cinema, Alain Delon, Marianne Faithfull, Girl On a Motorcycle

Since I’m devoting this week to all things fabulous and French I couldn’t resist spending some time writing about my favorite French actor, the beautiful, enigmatic and talented Alain Delon.

Alain Delon and I begun our one-sided love affair in the summer of 1996. It was then that Purple Noon (a.k.a. Plein Soleil, 1960) was re-released in American movie theaters thanks to Martin Scorsese and Miramax. I read a brief piece about the film in a local paper and thought it sounded fascinating so during it’s revival I caught Purple Noon playing in San Francisco at the Embarcadero Center.

It’s hard to put into words how my first meeting with Alain Delon transpired, but I can tell you that I’ve never fallen so hard and so fast for an actor before and I don’t expect that I ever will again. Delon was without a doubt the most beautiful thing I had ever seen captured on film. To this day, I don’t believe there has ever been a more charismatic or beautiful man who has stood in front of a moving camera.

While watching Purple Noon I was completely transfixed by Delon’s incomparable beauty and charm, but I was also swept away by his talent. His performance as Tom Ripley in Purple Noon is really remarkable and in my opinion it overshadows all other attempts to bring Patricia Highsmith’s character to life. I loved the way Delon conveyed Ripley’s quiet madness with his facial ticks and icy stares. Delon’s acting was understated, but very powerful and his performance in Purple Noon was completely unlike anything I had ever seen before.

When the movie ended I walked out of the theater in a daze. I couldn’t remember the plot or the names of any other people involved in the film except for Alain Delon. I would have to see the movie again (and again, and again…) to fully appreciate it, but I did know that Delon had suddenly become my favorite actor and I was determined to see every film he had ever made and to learn as much about him as I could.

Unfortunately I soon discovered that wasn’t going to be an easy task. 1996 was still the VHS age and eBay and IMDb were in their infantile stages. The internet proved to be utterly useless and searches for Alain Delon brought up next to nothing. I spent my time looking through English language film books for any bits of info I could find about him, but I had very little to show for my efforts. It’s hard to believe now, but Alain Delon was an enigma in 1996. Mostly forgotten by American film audiences and often ignored by American film critics.

My search finally led me to look for a French pen pal in the hope that they might be able to help me in my quest for anything and everything related to Delon. At the time I had a few Japanese pen pals who I exchanged comic books with and with their help I found a French comic book fan who thankfully understood my passion for Delon. She was kind enough to send me second generation VHS tapes of some of Delon’s French films as well as photos that she cut out of old magazines. The more I learned about Delon, the more I became fascinated with him. He’s no angel and he’s definitely done things that I can’t possibly begin to understand (neglecting his son Christian by Nico comes to mind). He’s human after all, and like all human beings he has good and bad qualities. His complexity as an individual and as an artist continues to fascinate me.

Fast forward to Sept. 1997 - I decided to take a class on web design at my local community college in order to improve my job opportunities. The teacher asked us all to create a web project featuring content or a subject which we felt was underrepresented on the web. Since there were absolutely no English language websites devoted to Alain Delon in 1997 I decided I would make Delon the focus of my web project and that is how the first English language website devoted to Alain Delon came to be. The website was called Alain Delon… A Tribute! and it has been off-line since 2000, but much of the old site has been archived by the fine folks at Wayback Machine for anyone who’s interested in giving it a look. Fair warning - try to ignore all the spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes if you do visit the site. If you don’t think I need an editor now, you soon will!

While I was putting the Alain Delon… A Tribute! site together I came in contact with the very nice Michael St Aubyn who used to run the wonderful Belles de Jour 2 site featuring information about many French actresses. Michael was kind enough to send me lots of images of Delon which I was extremely grateful for. With his help, as well as the help of other Delon fans I met online, I managed to put together a pretty decent tribute site and the first English language site devoted to Alain Delon on the world wide web.

I had fun with the Alain Delon… A Tribute! site at first. I met some great people through the site and won some web awards for my efforts. I was also contacted by Anchor Bay and ended up helping them put together some information for the American release of the wonderful Jack Cardiff film Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) which features Alain Delon and Marianne Faithfull. I got a free copy of the film from Anchor Bay for my efforts, but it managed to get lost in the mail (at least that’s what Anchor Bay claimed . . . ).

Unfortunately I was also contacted by a lot of nuts who assumed I was Alain Delon and they sent me some really disturbing emails. One guy in particular became extremely hard to deal with. He was clearly crazy and obsessed with Delon. He wrote bizarre notes to me as if I was Delon that were filled with sexual threats that frankly frightened me. It made me very sympathetic to the kind of horrible things celebrities must have to deal with on a regular basis.

When Yahoo took over Geocities I managed to loose my password and I couldn’t recover it to access the site, but to be honest I didn’t try very hard. I was tired of dealing with nutty fans so I let the Alain Delon… A Tribute! site fade into obscurity. My own appreciation for Delon has never gone away though. I still have a lot of material that I would love to get online and share with other fans.

I’d like to revamp the site for it’s upcoming 10 year anniversary in 2008. If you read the material I collected there you’ll find that the site has been borrowed from countless times by other film sites that are now online as well as Wikipedia, etc. Naturally I don’t own Delon, so I don’t mind that his other fans have used my original content too much, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me just a little bit to see whole paragraphs and sentences I’ve written online with someone else’s name and copyright slapped on them.

I’ve recently been really inspired by David Zuzelo over at Tomb It May Concern who is currently putting together the wonderful Thriller-A Cruel Picture Archives on his blog as well as Dan Taylor’s terrific Klaus Kinski Files blog. Blogs are much easier to manage than entire websites and I think creating an Alain Delon archive blog where I can share all my Delon materials might be the best way to revive Alain Delon… A Tribute! It seems silly to keep all my original Delon material to myself. If you have any ideas or suggestions about how to best share my Delon materials please feel free to drop me a note or comment below.

A few months ago I came across a music video on Youtube by the French band La Kuizine who actually used clips of my old Alain Delon… A Tribute! website in one of their music videos. My site is featured in part 03 of their 3 part musical epic called Delon En Large which includes sound clips and film clips from Delon’s many movies. I thought that was pretty darn cool myself and I actually really like La Kuizine’s experimental electronic music so I figured I’d share the bands video here.

You can watch the first two parts of La Kuizine’s Delon Et Large here.
- Delon En Large, extract 01
- Delon En Large, extract 02

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