Performance [1970] Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg

http://bayimg.com/hAJOaAacF

Performance (1970)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066214/

1:45:38 runtime

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.

James Fox ... Chas
Mick Jagger ... Turner
Anita Pallenberg ... Pherber
Michèle Breton ... Lucy (as Michele Breton)
Ann Sidney ... Dana
John Bindon ... Moody
Stanley Meadows ... Rosebloom
Allan Cuthbertson ... The Lawyer
Anthony Morton ... Dennis (as Antony Morton)
Johnny Shannon ... Harry Flowers
Anthony Valentine ... Joey Maddocks
Kenneth Colley ... Tony Farrell (as Ken Colley)
John Sterland ... The Chauffeur
Laraine Wickens ... Lorraine

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.

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, Image 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.

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.

In the September/October 2009 issue of Film Comment, Mick Jagger's Turner was voted the best performance by a musician in a film.



THE GIST

The British cinema that redefined itself through the 1960s is bracketed for posterity between two films that were considered in their day an affront to good taste. On the far end, Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) was regarded by critics in the United Kingdom as emblematic of the decline of one half of the respectable “Archers,” the two-man production outfit responsible for such national treasures as 'I Know Where I’m Going!' (1945), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). The backlash against Peeping Tom derailed Powell’s film career and he retreated for several years into television. Ten years later, Performance (1970), a collaborative effort between former painter Donald Cammell and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg (who had shot Fahrenheit 451 [1966] for François Truffaut and Petulia [1968] for Richard Lester) ruffled similar feathers and it isn’t difficult to appreciate why the film opened old wounds. Both Peeping Tom and Performance deal in part with the act of looking, with the consumption inherent in the process of observing, and both works left filmgoers and critics deeply disturbed. Writing in The Spectator in 1960, Isabel Quigly called Peeping Tom the "sickest and filthiest film I remember seeing” while Performance (financed by Warner Brothers and held in reserve in the studio’s vaults for a year) was skewered by American critic Richard Schickel as “the most disgusting, the most completely worthless film I have ever seen.” A generation later, both Peeping Tom and Performance are considered contemporary classics.

The origins of Performance go back to Donald Cammell’s immersion in the subculture of London’s bohemian Chelsea quarter, a nexus from 1959 onwards for dandyism and decadence, for ethnic influences and unorthodox philosophies. Fascinated by the inclusion rituals of both drug-takers seeking spiritual transcendence and career criminals (such as the infamous Kray Twins) for whom secrecy and alternate identities were standard operating procedure, Cammell crafted a tale of the collision of artistic and criminal worlds which he intended to call The Liars. The notion appealed to Hollywood agent Sandy Lieberson, who asked Cammell to tailor the piece for Marlon Brando and Mick Jagger, clients of Creative Management Associates. Cammell banged out the screenplay in Saint-Tropez with the assistance of his then-girlfriend, model Deborah Dixon, and actress/model Anita Pallenberg, a former lover. (Actually doing his typing on the beach, Cammell nearly lost his manuscript to an errant gust of wind which lifted the pages out to sea.) The title was changed to The Performers and ultimately the more existential Performance as Cammell’s script incorporated Pallenberg’s studies in mysticism and “magick” (Cammell himself had a personal connection to British occultist Aleister Crowley) and the influence of avant garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger, “Beat” writer William S. Burroughs and Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges. (Cammell also drew inspiration from John Boorman’s Point Blank and Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Despair.) Brando dropped out of the project early on (the actor and Cammell would be involved in a number of stillborn collaborations through the next decade) and the role of the gangster Chas was given to Cammell’s Chelsea neighbor James Fox, who had appeared in the Cammell-scripted Duffy (1968). Jagger’s then-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull alleged in her 1994 autobiography that the controversial ménage a trois depicted in Performance’s trippy second act was based on a real life four-some involving herself, Jagger, Fox and the actor’s androgynous companion Andee Cohen.

From preproduction to the final edit, Performance was plagued by - or benefited from – a series of calamities that boosted the prevailing aura of madness. The production history is larded with myths about what really went on during principal photography (among the more long-lived rumors are that Fox participated in actual criminal burglaries and that he was dosed with psilocybin during filming) but the verifiable anecdotes make for equally good reading. Hollywood actresses Tuesday Weld and Mia Farrow had both agreed to appear in Performance as the in-house concubines of Jagger’s reclusive Turner but both bowed out due to injuries; Anita Pallenberg assumed Weld’s role and newcomer Michele Breton was given the part abdicated by Farrow.

The principal photography on Performance commenced on Monday, July 29, 1968, with filming in the Wandsworth, Mayfair and Kensington neighborhoods of London. For the second act, set within Turner’s tumbledown pied-à-terre, a Notting Hill walk-up east of the Portobello Road was used for exteriors while interiors were lensed inside a townhouse in the more upmarket Knightsbridge. To add an authentic aura of criminality, Cammell and Roeg had entertained the notion of retaining Reginald and Ronald Kray as technical advisors. When “The Twins” were arrested in May 1968 for the murders of George Cornell and Jack “The Hat” McVittie, the filmmakers relied instead on the services of scarfaced mobster David Litvinoff, who is credited as a dialogue coach. The production received its first negative publicity when ten rolls of film that had captured the ménage a trois scene were seized as pornographic material and ordered destroyed. Surviving fragments turned up in Europe in later years as porn reels.

Performance was for all intents and purposes in the can by October 1968. The following February, the film was screened in Los Angeles for Warner Brothers executives, who deemed the material unreleasable. With a regime change at the studio later that year came the possibility that Performance might be salvaged given an extensive re-edit (which would, among other things, bring star Mick Jagger into the action earlier). With Nicolas Roeg in Australia preparing Walkabout (1971), Cammell was left with the task of cutting. Working with veteran editor Frank Mazzola (who had, earlier in his career, played one of the teenage gang members in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, 1955), Cammell tendered a succession of possible cuts before the final version was approved by the Warners front office for release in August 1970. Since the end of principal photography almost two years earlier, Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton had both become severely addicted to drugs (the latter ultimately confined to a sanitarium). So unnerved by his participation in the film, James Fox retired from acting for eight years and embraced Christianity. In July, Mick Jagger’s Rolling Stones band mate Brian Jones (who had inspired the character of Turner) was found dead of mysterious circumstances and that December the Stones’ participation at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival was marred by violence and murder (chronicled in the 1970 documentary Gimme Shelter). While Jagger, Fox and Nicolas Roeg continue to enjoy long and fruitful careers, Donald Cammell directed only three more features before taking his own life in April 1996.