PERFORMANCE (director: Donald Cammell/Nicolas Roeg; screenwriter: Donald Cammell; cinematographer: Nicolas Roeg; editor: Frank Mazzola; cast: James Fox (Chas Devlin), Mick Jagger (Turner), Anita Pallenberg (Pherber), Michele Breton (Lucy), Johnny Shannon (Harry Flowers), Stan Meadows (Rosebloom), John Bindon (Moody ), Anthony Morton (Dennis), Anthony Valentine (Joey Maddocks), Kenneth Colley (Tony Farrell), Allan Cuthbertson (The lawyer), John Sterland (The Chauffeur), Laraine Wickens (Lorraine), 1970-U.K.)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Strange, bizarre, confusing, and psychedelic, all are apt descriptions for this easy to follow story but most difficult film to keep track of. That is mainly due to the elliptical editing, fast cuts, forward and backward flashbacks, and a montage of images with all kinds of implications behind them. It is a film, that of all studios, for Warner Bros. to come out with it, just doesn't make sense. This is not the type of independent artistic film they make over there. Their reaction to seeing the finished product was predictably one of disbelief and disgust. They felt they had been dirtied by having their name associated with this film; and with Donald Cammell, the former artist now film director, refusing the studio's demands to cut huge portions of the film, therefore the film was put on hold for a few years until Cammell was called back to finish the film his way. Nicolas Roeg, at that point, disassociated himself from the film, but since his name was left on it, and Cammell was an inexperienced 26-year-old director, Roeg unfairly received the lion's share of the critical credit that was to come from some of the established critics who, true to form, didn't recognize what an innovative and masterful film it was until much later. An underground audience, well-aware of the peyote mushrooms and psychedelic flashes throughout the film, rushed to see it in a partylike 'hippie' atmosphere during the midnight hours it was shown, to packed audiences. Warner Bros. was clueless how to market the film, whether to make it a Mick Jagger 'rock' experience or as a gangster film. Therefore the film floundered in the box offices across straight America, and was quickly pulled out of the theaters by the unhappy studio executives.
Chas (James Fox) is the muscle man for a London protection racket, run by a puff, the egotistical and perverted Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon). That Chas is an anal compulsive, an artist in his field of enforcement (a takeoff on the British gangster Jimmy Evans), thoroughly enjoying his work of putting the fright into those who cross the organization, is shown, as he leaves the woman (Wickens) he just slept with and goes to work smartly dressed in a suit and tie, warning the accused on trial for an unethical merger that he'll be in a wheel chair if he implicates Harry Flowers in any way. When his lawyer butts in, saying he is not intimidated, Chas returns with the boys, Rosy (Meadows) and Dennis (Morton), and they gag the lawyer's Chauffeur and razor cut his hair, and take a bucket of acid to the lawyer's Rolls Royce, ruining the paint job. The next one they go after is one of the East Enders Chas grew up with and whom he now hates for various personal reasons, Joey Maddocks (Valentine), who is being forced into joining the organization and giving up control of his horse betting parlor. Harry warns Chas to stay out of this, keep your personal things out of the business. When the boys decorate Joey's place, Chas walks in when its over and rubs it into Joey, taking him to see Harry. Joey joins the organization, gleeful at seeing Harry admonish Chas for not listening to him and calling him mockingly the Lone Ranger.
Joey will jump Chas in his flat after they leave Harry's, wrecking the place and pouring red paint all over it, and with the help of two of his boys pin down Chas and whip the daylights out of him. Somehow Chas gets free and shoots Joey, which turns out to be his downfall, as he now has to go on the run from the gang and from the police.
One of the highlights of the first half of the film, was the nude dance number performed by the Harry Flowers gang. They danced, sang an ode to Harry, and we saw that they can be just as notorious as America's gangsters. Their overt homosexuality indicated that homosexuals wield tremendous power within his crime organization and probably have some impact in Britain's gangster world.
The next half of the film is about Chas finding shelter in the Notting Hill home of a once famous pop singer, Turner (Mick Jagger), who is now reclusive, living with two foreign women in an exotic sexual relationship, with the well-built Pherber (Anita) and the skinny masculine looking Lucy (Breton). What abounds in Jagger's bohemian place, are head trips, mind-screwings, merging of personalities and sexual characteristics. Each artist is currently stuck and in a dilemma on how to resolve their problem: Fox enjoyed his work too much and didn't know when to stop, and is now doomed. Jagger has lost his demon for madness, which gives him his creativity to perform. It seems as if, in a strange way, these two opposites, have similar impulses that give them their power to succeeed. This is Jagger's thought, as he attempts the merging of their personalities alchemically by feeding Fox those potent mushrooms and getting him confused about his masculinity and who he really is, until Jagger can digest his trip fully and trade places with him, even though he knows Fox is in extreme danger of losing his life.
Fox needs to get a passport from Tony (Colley), someone he can rely on, as he phones him for help to escape to America (a very good place for gangsters and performers to go to). Unfortunately for Fox, he is double-crossed by Tony, who tips Harry off to where he is.
As a reward for getting into Fox's head, Jagger is shot by him when Harry's boys come to take Chas away on a ride he will never return from. I guess it is one head trip exchanged for another, each doing it the way they know best.
The violent trip that Fox is on, has been around forever, as under the hallucinogenic drug, time becomes irrelevant and we are treated to all sorts of images from his past and present life, plus a glaring look at Francis Bacon's homo-erotic art work, which makes reality and fantasy become hard to distinguish. Chas is very uncomfortable with losing complete control of the situation; yet he sticks to who he thinks he is, pretending to be normal, even though he has been sexually crossed-dressed by Pherber, losing his sense of complete manliness and is scrutinized by Jagger as he tries to reclaim the image he has of himself. Chas looks and acts as anything but what society would take for normal. The last image we have of him, is as Pherber dressed him, as he enters Harry's white Cadillac and his face looks just like Jagger's; but Harry happily greets him as Chas, as if he was becoming reaquainted with an old friend.
Performance is also noted for its memorable music, as arranged by the rock genius, Jack Nietzche. Some of the music played was by the Last Poets, a bitter rap song about the 'The Big Apple,' Randy Newman ( Long Dead Train ), Buffy Saint Marie ( Dyed, Dead, Red ), and Ry Cooder ( Bootleneck guitar).
Warner Bros. tried suing the director Cammell after seeing how he completed the film, hoping not to release it, that's how bad the feelings were, for a film that lived on to become a cult favorite even though it never got its proper due with the straight critics and public. Cammell committed suicide in 1996, copying the style used by Fox when he executed Jagger, and supposedly remaining conscious for 45 minutes after the shooting, but was in no pain, as reported by friends. For him, murder turned out to be truly a work of art.
It was a film whose psychedelic flashes might seem a bit dated now, but all the best directors from Kubrick to Scorsese borrowed freely from it, as it changed the way many mainstream films were to be made after 1970. The freshness and energy and montages of the film are unique, as it was able to mix the world of art with violence, something that seems to be a natural fit, as shown in these kaleidoscope images. What results is the merging from the opposite worlds of the underworld and underground, as influenced by the business of making money, the Holy Grail at the end of the journey. It is a film that both gangsters and artists can sink their teeth into, even if the gangster might fail to recognize how he looks to others or to himself.
A one of a kind film, deserving of much critical praise, as it is a most efficacious look at the subculture of the gangster and artist worlds and, simultaneously, a most enigmatic film to try and take in all its fanciful images and perversions and drug induced fantasies, though time has taken away some of its freshness, it still is a work of considerable power.
REVIEWED ON 8/14/99 GRADE: A
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Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
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