Performance (1970)

Very disappointing...

best movie i've ever seen.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Wringing the ethos out of the vestige of beatnik and swinging 60s, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's hallucinogenic cult film PERFORMANCE (which marks both filmmakers' directorial feature debut), was made in 1968 but mothballed by the studio for two years due to its obscene sexual contents and explicit violence. For a new audience, it is fairly natural to get dumbfounded by the film's frenetic editing of montages from the very start, amalgamating graphic sex sequences between our protagonist Chas (Fox) and his casual bed-mate Dana (Sidney) with manifold clumps of irrelevant scenes which later rig up a flimsy narrative, it is a sharp, disorientating gambit, but seems too divisive by half (it is a post-production last resort to mitigate the smutty images at the expense of its own impetus and coherence as a dauntless cause célèbre by this reviewer's lights). Chaz is an aggro-prone tearaway working for the gang of Harry Flowers (a corn-fed Johnny Shannon), but before long he needs to lie low after rubbing out an attacker of bad blood out of self-defense, since Harry wants him vanish as well. So he hangs his hat in the basement of a decrepit residence owned by a former rock star Turner (Mick Jagger's acting debut), who has lost his demon in what he does and secludes himself from the outside world, co-habits with his lover Pherber (the late Pallenberg, a là Warhol's Factory Girl) and a young French girl Lucy (a tomboyish Breton), the equilibrium of their boho ménage-à-trois will dutifully be ruffled (not exactly challenged as we tend to surmise judging by its cover) by Chaz, an unbidden outsider under the pseudonym of Johnny Dean.The premise sounds promising for making a heavy weather of the underlying discrepancy/assimilation between two male ids: Chaz's macho/gangsta make-up and Turner's androgynous and lackadaisical stagnation, but in reality, however visually psychedelic the film looks (Dutch angles, a distorted God's viewpoint shot, mesmeric mirror images, that creepy identity-shifting moment in the end, just to name a few), the fundamentals are only scratched skin- deep, often to one's aggravation, instead, it evolves into a dashing and dazing shindig of excesses (nudity rather than sex) and a madcap platform for Turner/Jagger's superstar glamour (who performs the theme song MEMO FROM TURNER in the MTV style, avant la lettre). Notorious for its under-the-influence verité carried out during the filmmaking (there is literal acid involved in the plot where Chaz and co. terrorizing a hapless chauffeur), PERFORMANCE ultimately comes off as a short-range stunner and an experimental novelty which cannot elevate its own perversity and subversion into something significantly revolutionary and groundbreaking, although James Fox is arguably in his most absorbing and ambiguously sensual form here. At odds with the state of those participated, PERFORMANCE is more stultifying than stupefying from the POV of a first-time viewer in the 21st century, that ship has long sailed, save for its skirling soundtrack, operatively transmitting those signs of bygone times into one's nostalgic delirium.

Performance is one of the all-time great psychedelic films. But while it has its share of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, its scope goes a fair bit further. It's essentially an avant-garde film in many ways and, therefore, is one that will turn-off a lot of viewers. But if you can take its experimentation you will be rewarded, as this is a real one-off and a definite high-point of counterculture movies as a whole. It was helmed by two unique artists, Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell; both of whom would go on to make other very interesting films. For my money Performance is arguably the best thing either one of them ever did.The narrative is effectively two stories colliding with one and other. It starts out as a crime film and then becomes an oddball drama, all the while gradually mutating into something increasingly stranger as it progresses. In summary it is about a gangster called Chas who is on the run who hides in the house of Turner, a reclusive rock star, while there odd inner psychological transformations occur that ultimately affect both characters in extreme ways. Identity is at the heart of this particular story. After being given hallucinogenic mushrooms, Chas has a vivid trip where he experiences revelations including an unexpected identification with Turner (even his name suggests he has the ability to turn you), a man who seems to be his polar opposite on the surface. Both characters in fact find that there are aspects in the other that they connect with, leading to Chas dressed like a counter-culture drop-out and Turner displaying an increasing fascination with the criminal persona. This is manifested in 'Memo From Turner' where Chas imagines Turner as his crime boss, it's a scene all the more impressive seeing as its one of the very earliest examples of what would go on to be known as the pop video.If nothing else though, Performance is visually a tour de force. It exhibits the highly experimental, bold editing that would go on to typify later films that Roeg would go on to direct. For this reason it certainly feels from a visual perspective that Roeg was the main influence; while story-content seems to have come primarily from Cammell. Whatever the case, this is a consistently interesting looking film, with disorientating edits and inventive camera-work. The grungy, crumbling den in which the majority of the action takes place is ripe for this kind of treatment. Its cluttered, decadent interiors create an atmosphere all of their own and add a considerable amount to the overall effect of the film.It is also helped considerably by an unusual cast who work extremely well together. Mick Jagger plays the androgynous Turner with ease. It's a role you could argue he was born to play for obvious reasons but Turner is more than a Jagger clone and is ultimately a somewhat strange character that would not have been nearly so compelling if it had not been for the fact that Jagger illustrates him so well. James Fox, as Chas, is probably even better still. He convinces as both the hard man criminal and the confused hybrid character he is by the end. He brings to the screen a definite charisma that works very well. Anita Pallenberg also makes an indelible impression as Pherber, one of Turner's groupies. I had only previously seen her in Barbarella as the Black Queen. She was a lot of fun in that one but as Pherber she is much better and incredibly sexy into the bargain as well.It's certainly not a film for everyone but there is a lot to like here if you have a taste for the odder side of cinema, especially if you like it with a dash of counter-cultural psychedelia.

Have been a huge fan of this movie since I first saw it about 30 years ago. It captures the mayhem of the time and brings together a Brit gangster movie with the psychedelic world of reclusive, faded rock star chic. I simply love everything about this film; James Fox is magnificent as a sadistic on the run gangster and Jagger does what he does best to a sizzling soundtrack of period music. So many firsts here... from the Moog synthesiser, the mixture of genres, its use of imagery, is that the first rap song? .. and more. The ending is a little confused but the whole thing is a feast for the senses, you can't guess what will happen next. They dared to try out lots of new ideas and combine many different styles.. it really works and defies categorisation to this day.. a masterpiece!

I suppose I come to this from a slightly difficult perspective, having seen some of Nicolas Roeg's more recent films before this. Compared with the rest of his output, as far as I can see, this is far superior, but it's not so easy to judge things impartially with exposure to so much inferior work.In any case, certainly this feels like the most successful of Roeg's films. Of course, I recognise his is co-director and co-producer, but his visual style is immediately obvious. This comes with its problems. For a cinematographer, he is surprisingly shy of framing shots very carefully. There is a very spontaneous, somewhat 'wobbly' quality to much of the visuals in Performance. However, in this instance this does rather fit with the atmosphere and aesthetic of the whole thing. It is, after all, the story of a deeply troubled young man, swinging between excesses of violence, sex, cultural and social self-discovery and all that. That having been said, however, again in a rather typical Roeg foible, none of those themes is really investigated. Everything is on the outside, a simple, visual experience of a few people's lives coming into confusion with each other. Not necessarily a bad thing, but with little story to speak of, one is rather left wondering what was the point of it all.The film, though, does give a striking portrait of a particular kind of social existence, one that was current at the time of its making, but in truth is probably applicable at most times and in most places. The suggestion that the criminal and bourgeois margins of society actually have much in common in terms of the nature of their somewhat teetering existence is a valid one. It's interestingly portrayed, and certainly eccentrically so. The performances are convincing, as you would expect, and unlike David Bowie's presence in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth', you don't ever feel that Jagger is simply trading on his familiarly odd outward character - there is a genuine enigmatic quality to his performance, and it brings something to the atmosphere of the film. James Fox, again, is on good form, if often called upon to manifest a limited palette of expressions of confusion and inner turmoil - a fuller script would have benefited this.All in all, a very atmospheric film with a certain captivating music to it, and certainly the only film of Roeg's that I have ever found to be really successful.