Performance is a British film made in 1968 but not released until 1970. It was directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, and stars James Fox and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones in his film acting debut.
Plot
Chas (James Fox) is a sexual sadist, misogynist and professional "performer," a violent enforcer for an East London gang led by Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon). Chas insubordinately disobeys Flowers' instructions to not involve himself in the takeover of a betting shop owned by Joey Maddocks (Anthony Valentine), a childhood enemy with whom he has a "history". As retaliation, Maddocks and an associate subsequently overpower and torture Chas in his apartment, but he turns the tables, killing Maddocks. Chas is forced to go on the run, both from the police and from his former colleagues, and dyes his hair red with house paint. Overhearing that a musician tenant is being evicted for non-payment of rent from "a perfect little hidey hole" in the basement apartment of a house owned by Turner (Mick Jagger), he ingratiates himself with Pherber (Anita Pallenberg), one of the female inhabitants, and moves in.
Turner is a reclusive, eccentric, former rock star who has "lost his demon" and who lives there with his female friends Pherber and Lucy (Michele Breton), with whom he enjoys a non-possessive and bi-sexual Ménage à trois. At first, Chas is contemptuous of Turner, and Turner attempts to return the rent paid in advance, but they start influencing each other. Chas also enjoys intimate moments with Pherber during which he shows his homophobic tendencies. Pherber and Turner understand his conflict and want to understand what makes him function so well within his world. To speed up the process they make him take hallucinogenic drugs (Amanita muscaria). After that evening Chas opens up. He begins a caring relationship with Lucy, implying that he outgrew the psychological boundaries he was stuck in due to having to function as a male man within a gangster world.
Consequently, at the end of the film Turner appears to be shot by Chas, and Pherber is also possibly dead. Chas seems to agree to be 'welcomed back' to his former boss, Harry Flowers, by Rosie (Stanley Meadows), another Flowers thug; we understand that they are going to kill him. However, in the final shot of the car driving off, we see through the window not Chas' face, but Turner's. The meaning and implication of this are left to the individual viewer, suggesting a connection between the talents of a "performer" and a performer, the interchangeability of their identities, as well as their having helped each other to grow out of being—as Pherber once mentioned—"stuck" within their own "performances."
Cast
Production
Performance was initially conceived by Donald Cammell as "The Performers" and was to be a lighthearted swinging 60's romp. At one stage, Cammell's friend Marlon Brando (with whom he later collaborated on the posthumously published novel Fan Tan) was to play the gangster role which became "Chas". At that stage the story involved an American gangster hiding out in London. James Fox, previously cast in rather upper crust roles, eventually took the place of Brando, and spent several months in South London among the criminal underworld researching his role.[1]
As the project evolved the story became significantly darker. Cammell was heavily influenced by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (a portrait of Borges on a book cover can be seen at a crucial moment in the film) as he redrafted the script to create an intense, intellectual film dealing with issues of identity crisis. Artaud's theories on the links between performing and madness also influenced Cammell. Cammell and co-director Nicolas Roeg (mainly responsible for the 'look' of the film) also benefited from a lack of interference from Warner Bros. studio executives, who believed they were getting a Rolling Stones equivalent of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964). Instead, Cammell and Roeg delivered a dark, experimental film which included graphic depictions of violence, sex and drug use.
The film has gained notoriety due to the difficulties it faced in getting on screen. The film's content was a complete surprise to the studio. It has been reported that during a test screening, one Warner executive's wife vomited in shock. The response from the studio was to deny the film a cinematic release. It has been claimed that at one stage Warner Bros. wanted the negative to be destroyed.
Performance was finally released in 1970 after several recuts, dubbing of Cockney accents and changes in Warner's administration. Different edits were shown around the world, however home video versions of the 1990s invariably used the US edit.
A commemorative event was held at London's ICA on October 18, 1997, incorporating a talk by film theorists (including Colin MacCabe, who went on to write a guide to the film), a screening of the uncut UK edition, and finally a question and answer session. Those in attendance included James Fox (and family), Pallenberg, set designer Christopher Gibbs, and Cammell's brother who introduced part of a video interview with David Cammell shot just before his death. Mick Jagger was originally to appear, but was committed to the Rolling Stones' Bridges to Babylon Tour.
The Region 1 DVD was released on February 13, 2007, and worldwide soon after. Although the film has undergone significant restoration, one famous line of dialogue - Jagger's "Here's to old England!" heard during the Memo From Turner sequence - has been deleted from the mix. This is because at this crucial stage of the film (the music sequence) one of the stereo channels has been used across both left and right channels. Other music and sound effects are also missing from this scene on the DVD release (some drums, the throbbing sound as Turner plugs a lead into his music generator and the shrieking sound at the climax of his fluorescent light tube dance). These sounds, the dialogue and the music are all audible on other releases of the film. Also, the voices of Harry Flowers and the young maid in Turner's mansion have been restored to the voices of the original actors. When the film was first released in the United States, and also on the VHS releases, their voices were overdubbed by other actors, as the studio at the time feared that Americans would find their Cockney accents difficult to understand.
Critical reputation
On its release the film received mixed reviews. Most reviewers focused on the graphic sexual elements. One reviewer (Richard Schickel) described it as "the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing."
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Performance gradually acquired a cult following on the late night and repertory cinema circuits. By the 1990s the film had undergone a complete critical reappraisal. In 1995 Performance appeared at number 28 in a Time Out magazine "all-time greats" poll of critics and directors. After Cammell's death in 1996 the film's reputation grew still further. It is now frequently cited as a classic of British cinema.
According to the website They Shoot Pictures, Don't They, which collects ranking from various critics and best-of lists, Performance, as of January 2008 is ranked 188th in the 1,000 Greatest Films of All Time.[2]
In the September/October 2009 issue of Film Comment, Mick Jagger's Turner was voted the best performance by a musician in a film. [1]
Influence
When Performance was released, several aspects of the film were extremely innovative, and historically it can be seen as a precursor to MTV type music videos (particularly the 'Memo from Turner' sequence in which Jagger sings), and many popular movies of the 1990s and 2000s. This movie has a soundtrack with Mick Jagger, Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, The Last Poets, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Merry Clayton.
- Performance was the first feature film to employ the cut-up technique (although the technique was employed in experimental shorts in the 1960s and 1970s, most notably by Antony Balch). Directors Cammell and Roeg also went on to use this technique in their following movies, before it became commonplace in popular cinema.
- The gangster aspect of Performance has been imitated by many popular directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, Jonathan Glazer and more.
- Performance pushed boundaries by featuring extremely explicit sex scenes and use of drugs, both which have been rumoured to be real instead of simulated. Although Andy Warhol's (and other underground filmmakers') films had featured such behaviour before Performance, it was unheard that such things appeared in a major studio production.
- Big Audio Dynamite's song "E=MC²" includes extensive dialogue samples from Performance. The song "Further Back and Faster" by Coil (on Love's Secret Domain) also samples dialogue from the film.
- Happy Monday's second album, Bummed, features several songs inspired by the film, including "Moving In With', "Performance", and "Mad Cyril". "Mad Cyril" is explicitly inspired by the film and included the following dialogue samples:
- "I like that, turn it up"
- "It was Mad Cyril!"
- "We have been courteous"
- "I need a bohemian atmosphere"
- Also inspired by the movie were the '79 Mod Revival act, Secret Affair whose East End following known as 'The Glory Boys' were based on the South London gangsters portrayed in the film. Glory Boys was also the title of their first album.
- In keeping with the intellectual bent of Jagger's character, legendary Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges is quoted numerous times during the film. His photograph appears in the brief montage which follows Turner's shooting.
- Beat the Devil, the BMW promo movie directed by Tony Scott and starring James Brown, Gary Oldman and Clive Owen, contains at least two references to Performance. At one point Owen's character says "I know a thing or two about performing" - a quote from Chas. The Devil, played by Oldman, dances with a fluorescent tube, just as Turner does in Performance.
Soundtrack
Performance (soundtrack)
References
Notes
Bibliography
- Ali Catterall and Simon Wells, Your Face Here: British Cult Movies Since The Sixties (Fourth Estate, 2001) ISBN 0-00-714554-3
External links
