Every time I hear Quentin Tarrantino claim to have invented non-linear story-telling, I want to yell. Nicolas Roeg (who photographed and co-directed) went on to perform many, many non-linear films, starting with this one in 1969, as did many other directors from the 70′s up to now (Steven Soderbergh, Terrence Mallick, to name fair two), so please, Quentin, shut up. “Performance” was perhaps the most influential film in my gain development as a director; film is a sculptural medium, and never illustrated more so than in this shimmering fragment film which moves through time and dwelling so gracefully, or jarringly, as required, while exploring identity, performance (of all sorts), spirituality, freedom from the prevailing standards of society–I could go on for pages, but will spare you. It can be found on video tape, mostly in “mature” bins, and as it was shot in regular 35mm, you don’t miss great of the frame, as it’s stop to your TV’s format anyway.
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Shot mostly hand-held, with Roeg using dissolves, double-exposures, color alteration, freeze-frames, and other Optical Printing techniques, as well as ravishing sound compose, the mind is assaulted by an abundance of images that you unbiased have to sit abet and beget and allow them to tie themselves together later, when you have time to believe about it. In order to tie characters and relationships together, one will originate a sentence while another, in an entirely different area and residence, will do it. This is worn to both connective and ironic achieve. “Performance” also contains the first “Rock Video” and a Rap Song (in 1969) by a group of drumming poets. The music, by a young Jack Nietshze and his wife, Buffy Sainte-Marie, features Ry Cooder, the astonishing vocals of Merry Clayton and her choir, and is both a driving force in the film and an eerie reflection of the psychological situations we’re in. And that’s really true: that we’re in. You rep as stop to being in this film as any you’re likely to recognize. It’s more experienced than viewed.
Donald Cammel was fascinated by Borges, a philosopher approved in the 60′s, was a friend of Jagger’s and Marriane Faithful’s, as well as Anita Pallenberg, who plays Jagger’s lover in the film, but who was in right life, Keith Richard’s partner. In turn, the aristocratic James Fox was fascinated by the Bohemian wildness of Mick and Marianne, and in a stroke of genius, Cammel switched their real-life situations, making Jagger the artist-in-exile aristocrat, and Fox the on-the-lam gangster. Drugs really were faded, the sex was real; in staunch life relationships were smashed, with Fox taking a 10-year hiatus from film, life, and fine considerable everything in order to peek his blown mind. This film, lustrous and indispensable in film history, raises the perennial expect all artists face: which is more notable, trusty lives, or art? I found it exciting that the dissimilar-in every-other-way current film, “Girl with Pearl Earring” actually brings up the same scream, though more subtly and only within the context of the film itself.
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The residence is almost beside the point as “Performance” is about so many, many things having nothing to do with “set”, but snappy, it’s structured in two halves. Chas (James Fox), a soldier for a petite organized crime group in London, has been attacked and taken his revenge on his attacker. Now he needs to hasten, as all turn on him, so he hides on the Left bank of the river, using the name “Johnny,” in Notting Hill (looking nothing like the current film of its name), in the home of a reclusive ex-Pop star, Turner (Jagger) and his German lover, Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and a French waif, Lucy (Michelle Breton in her only cover role) . In the second “half,” the externally frenetic run of the first fragment is replaced by the externally unexcited but internally chaotic bright of all of Chas’ perceptions through hallucinagetics, mind-games–the intentional dismantling of Chas’ personality so that Turner can earn the stimulation he needs in order to waste his creatively “stuck” location. The process was so thorough that bad James was unable to function for a decade. It was through this role, though, that Mick Jagger, a very banal, middle-class sort of guy (who never did drugs on any serious level) emerged with a persona to go on through his career with. (Check out Marrianne Faithful’s memoirs for more…) The film forces its characters, and if we want it to, us, to ask, “Who am I? ” on a level that most never even arrive. How grand of “me” is performance, and how worthy my upright self? And, “Can I really merge my identity completely with another’s? ” The “who am I, truly? ” is the exploration of the film, and the exploration that those of us who stand by its “fresh” structure and sensory over-load, are generally interested in. It is intense, but if you want it to affect you, unbiased let it, and believe more and more deeply as you witness it again and again. Personally, I don’t know anyone who has seen it less than a dozen times.
Cammel didn’t work great after this, as Roeg did. He (Roeg) went on to manufacture some of the most essential films of our time: “Walkabout,” “Poor Timing: A Sensual Obsession,” “Insignificance,” “The Man who Fell to Earth,” “Castaway” (not “THE Castaway” with Tom Hanks, but “Castaway,” based on Lucy Irvine’s book about her lovely but nearly fatal year on a desert island with a man who’d advertised for a companion in the experiment) . Nicolas also proved that one can “fail” (“Eureka,” “Track 29″) without being less than knowing at the same time. His “failures” are more inviting than most directors’ “successes,” and recent filmmakers can learn more from them than from a thousand Speilbergs.
I do wish they’d release this film on DVD, as my tape is so primitive from years of re-viewing and showing everyone. It sometimes shows up at Salvage Houses, should you be fortunate enough to have one in your city (ours is gone), where you can eye it on the gargantuan cover, as intended.
And a final note: the last shot is NOT your imagination, and it sums up the entire film. Don’t over-think it, unprejudiced derive it, and like one of the greatest cinematic rides of all time.
Donald Cammell
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“If Performance does not upset audiences,” he explained, “then it is nothing.”
My friend Neil and I have been waiting for some time to glimpse this film at the cinema. It hasn’t been widely available on video for some time and has not yet been released on DVD.
So we were contented to peruse it was being shown at the Electric Cinema a unbelievable recently revamped cinema in Notting Hill Gate, not a hundred yards from Powis Square, one of the main locations in the film.
Performance was financed by Warner Brothers in the behind 60′s, though it was not released for two years after its completion due to WB demanding recuts and probably hoping the whole sordid exiguous film would be forgotten about.
Thankfully it wasn’t, and has over the years become something vital and special to many people.
Performance starts as a seemingly straightforward East waste gangster film, typical of the period. However when Chas, played to perfection by James Fox, takes refuge in the bohemian lair that is Turners (Jagger) Powis Square townhouse, the bound and the feel of the film change dramatically.
Turner is a retired rock icon who is wallowing in in a filthy corner of his psyche while he decides whether to try and recapture his mojo or continue his hermit like existence. However the hermit price only applies to Turners lack of contact with current air, not many hermits have two heavenly free spirits in the develop of Pherber (Anita Pallenberg ) and Lucy (Michele Breton) roaming naked around their self imposed prisons.
Pallenberg is the wild blonde who was probably didn’t win it too hard to collect into character, at the time of filming she was actually Keith Richards’s girlfriend, and tales of a jealous Richards watching over the spot are abound.
For me the most spicy character and also seemingly someone who probably wasn’t acting is Breton. A very graceful boyish French Girl who was said to be a runaway. I have read that she died shortly after the film which seems like a shaded but not surprising ruin for such a free provocative child of the sixties. I would worship to have been able to assure you more about Breton, but a search on the internet will turn up very cramped. She would seem to me like a leaf that breezed into swinging London and was swept away like so many others.
Jagger is convincing as Turner and this is undoubtedly his best, if not his only genuine, film.
As Turner takes over control of the film from Chas we are treated to a feast of decadence and weirdness that never strays too far from reality for its bear expedient. The film is tied down to a solid snide by the continuing gangster film thread humming silently in the background.
Since 1970 many an apocryphal chronicle has surfaced surrounding the making of Performance, ranging from nervous breakdowns to suicide and drug overdoses. I am always skeptical about such tales, but, unfortunately most of these tales would actually seem to be honest. Certainly writer and co director Donald Cammel shot himself and James Fox was apprehensive enough not to gain another film for many years afterwards.
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As I waited for my friends to reach out of the Electric Cinema, I overheard many a reaction to the film from other patrons. On the whole it would seem that people seemed disappointed or confused or even annoyed. Thanks god for that. Thank god it has not been tamed by age and become a splendid exiguous fragment of 60′s nostalgia.
Performance does upset audiences. It IS something.
Total Gym 2000
