Perhaps the ultimate example of a “60’s film,” PERFORMANCE (1970), the directorial debuts of its joint helmers Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, was completed in 1968 but went unreleased until two years later. During those two years it was subjected to heavy recutting by Cammell and around half a dozen others (Roeg having moved onto solo directing with 1971’s WALKABOUT), with the final result looking, in the words of author Joseph Lanza, like “a ragged and dejected debutante at a coming out party.” Yet even in compromised form the film’s untamed brilliance is undeniable.
PERFORMANCE (1970) Trailer
The ultra-violent opening half is taken up with the sadistic British mob enforcer Chas (James Fox) carrying out his “work,” which includes brutal beatings, vandalism and shaving peoples’ heads (inspired by the actual exploits of the film’s mob-affiliated technical advisor David Litvinoff). But Chas has a checkered past involving a gay tryst with one Joey Maddocks, who he’s supposed to be protecting (most of the gay content, FYI, was subsumed in all the recutting). When Joey beats up Chas the latter turns the tables and shoots his ex-lover, which puts Chas in the sights of his ruthless boss Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon).
Anita Pallenberg and Mick Jagger
In search of a place to hide out, Chas overhears a man talking about a basement apartment that’s just become vacant, located in a building owned by Turner (Mick Jagger), a retired rock star. The place is, in Chas’s words, a “freakshow,” with rococo architecture, highly exotic African inspired décor and two equally exotic seductresses (Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton) afoot.
Mick Jagger, Michele Breton, Anita Pallenberg
Recognizing that the conservative Chas doesn’t fit in, Turner attempts to rescind the rental agreement. Chas, however, is determined to stay put, and Turner, sensing heretofore unnoticed depths in his new tenant, allows him to stay. Chas uses the opportunity to get a photo taken for his forged passport while Turner feeds him shrooms. Under their influence Chas and Turner explore each other’s “acts” (they’re both performers, after all) and discover they’re each on course for a date with the Big D—a date hastened by the fact that the mob has learned of Chas’ whereabouts, and are closing in.
The film has GREAT visuals by its co-director and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, but it was apparently Donald Cammell who was primarily responsible for the style and tone (note that Roeg spoke very little about PERFORMANCE in later years). In their subsequent work Roeg and Cammell both utilized this film’s quirks, which include fractured editing and a jangly avant-garde score.
James Fox
Those things are widely employed during the supposedly gritty and straightforward first half and leaned into during the druggy and pansexual second. Much of it is brilliant, with the climactic “Memo from Turner” sequence, in which Mick Jagger recreates an early scene from the film in musical form with a self-penned song, being an undoubted standout. Other parts are plain ridiculous, as when a photo of Jorge Luis Borges is flashed onscreen to illuminate the Borgesian nature of the proceedings. The net result, however, is disturbing and consistently fascinating.
The narrative is impossible to follow on its own (you’ll need to read the published screenplay, or the novelization by William Hughes), although traditional storytelling doesn’t seem to have been Cammell or Roeg’s primary concern. What they do appear to have been trying to impart, namely the relationship between the business world, underworld economics and the artistic impulse, comes through loud and clear.
James Fox is excellent as Chas, while Jagger appears to be playing himself (in fact, he claimed to have been imitating the mannerisms of his late bandmate Brian Jones) and Anita Pallenberg matches them both in screen presence and sex appeal. But PERFORMANCE is first and foremost a directorial tour-de-force; neither Cammell nor Roeg were ever again allowed to cut loose like they did in PERFORMANCE, and the cinema has been greatly impoverished because of that.
Vital Statistics
PERFORMANCE
Goodtimes Enterprises/Warner Bros.
Directors: Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg
Producer: Sanford Lieberson
Screenplay: Donald Cammell
Cinematography: Nicolas Roeg
Editing: Anthony Gibbs, Brian Smedley-Aston
Cast: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michele Breton, Ann Sidney, John Bindon, Stanley Meadows, Allan Cuthbertson, Antony Morton, Johnny Shannon, Anthony Valentine, Ken Colley, John Sterland, Laraine Wickens