Here's a film, Performance (1970), that will either bore you to pieces or engage every fiber of your mind, body, and spirit. That may sound like an extreme dichotomy, but it's a pretty fair description of the range of reactions that this film elicits. It's one of the most revolutionarily experimental, counterculture films you'll encounter. It was made in 1966/7 and has continued to grow in stature since its disastrous release in 1970. The themes are rather abstract and the film's delivery involves highly distinctive techniques. You may conclude that this is a film worth watching over and over again, with ever deepening levels of appreciation, or you may decide that its just too out of control to be satisfying. If you're not into working actively with a film, you're not likely to enjoy Donald Cammell's little psychedelic extravaganza very much at all.

Historical Background: British director Donald Seton Cammell was born January 17th, 1934, in Edinburgh, England. His family had been well heeled at one time, but lost its fortune in the 1929 stock market crash. Donald attended the Royal Academy and initially worked as a portrait artist. In his thirties, however, Cammell turned to writing screenplays. His first two scripts culminated in Robert Freeman's The Touchables (1968) and Robert Parrish's Duffy (1968) respectively, although the script for the former film was first re-written by Ian La Frenais. Both of those films combined elements of the world of crime with the hippy subculture.

Cammell thought to continue with that same formula for his next script, Performance, but wanted greater involvement in ensuring that his vision would make it to the screen relatively intact. Cammell's agent linked him up with an experienced cinematographer and would-be director, London-born Nicolas Roeg, who was Cammell's senior by five years. The film was a collaborative effort and one can identify both Cammell's and Roeg's handiwork in the themes and visual representations. Roeg handled the camera and Jack Nitzsche provided the highly eclectic and powerful soundtrack.

Warner Bros., which produced the film, had no idea, apparently, what they were getting into. The Warner Bros. branch in England just wasn't into making independent or radically experimental films. The film was shot during 1966 and 1967, but when the studio saw the preliminary screening, they were aghast and disgusted. They were expecting some kind of Rolling Stones companion piece along the lines of what A Hard Day's Night (1964) had done for the Beatles. Instead they got what would have to be an "X" rated film for which there would also be little market. Worse, the staid executives were concerned that the film would soil the studio's reputation for moral decency. The studio wanted to cut huge portions of the film, but Cammell refused to agree. The film sat uncompleted for two years, during which time Roeg withdrew himself from further association with it. Cammell was finally allowed to finish the film. It was edited down somewhat, but retained Cammell's essential vision. When the film then flopped in mainstream theaters, Cammell had to bear the blame. It also didn't initially fare well with critics. That the film later developed a cult following and deep respect from at least a sizable number of critics was small consolation.

The Story: On the surface, the story is fairly straight-forward, but disparate images frequently intercut amidst the main storyline, portraying fragments from concurrent subplots, past or future occurrences, and memory, in much the manner of music videos. Chas (James Fox) is a mob enforcer (which they term a "performer"), working for mob boss Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon). Chas and a couple of other mob thugs, Dennis (Anthony Morton) and Rosebloom (Stanley Meadows), intimidate a former Flowers's associate, Mr. Frazer, into taking the fall for a botched deal rather than involving Flowers. Later, they drive the point home to the man's attorney (Allan Cuthbertson) by destroying the paint job on his Rolls Royce with acid and shaving the chauffeur's (John Sterland) head, leaving just one tiny patch of hair. It's easy to see that Chas takes real pride in his work as a ferocious intimidator.

When Flowers next targets Joey Maddocks's betting parlor for "merger" with the "firm," he decides to cut Chas out of the rough stuff because Chas has a couple personal gripes with Joey. Flowers doesn't believe in mixing personal matters with business. Chas shows up anyway and adds a little extra humiliation to what the thugs have already dished out, by escorting Joey to a meeting with Flowers. Flowers doesn't like this bit of insubordination on Chas's part and later sends Joey and two thugs to work over Chas in his apartment. They strip his backside and flail him with a leather strap. Chas pretends to pass out and uses a moment of carelessness on the part of the thugs to grab his gun and shoot Joey dead. Flowers is infuriated because the ensuing police investigation is bound to damage his operation. Chas anticipates that he'll be targeted for execution and has to find some place to hide out.

A conversation overheard by chance gives Chas the opportunity he needs. He takes up residence in a vacated apartment in Soho, with a Notting Hill address. This being the sixties, Notting Hill means the Bohemian lifestyle rather than the smart, up-scale living depicted in the 1999 film, Notting Hill, with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. Chas figures that the mob won't come searching for him in a crowded flat packed with drug-addled artists. The room taken over by Chas is being let by a retired rock star, Turner (Mick Jagger). He lives with two foxy ladies, a young girl named Lorraine (Laraine Wickens), eastern artifacts, meditation candles, and all sorts of drugs. Lorraine looks like a tomboy but talks more like a dwarf. Turner spends his time cavorting with his two adult female lovers in a perpetual ménage a trois. One of the women, Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) is well endowed, while the other, Lucy (Michèle Breton), has a build only a bit rounder than an adolescent boy. Turner is rather androgynous himself, so when the three are intermingled, it's generally hard to tell which body parts belong to which suitemate.

Turner initially tells Chas to get out, but changes his mind when he begins to sense that Chas may be the embodiment of his own missing psychic piece. For several years, Turner hasn't been able to perform as a musician because he's lost his inner demon. His severe case of artist's block has reduced him to his present hedonistic life of sex and drugs. Turner sees in Chas his mirage image – a man of pure and passionate anger. Turner embarks on a plan of mental seduction or mind rape. His plan is to absorb Chas's identity into his own by covertly poisoning Chas with psychedelic mushrooms. Soon, Chas, who is trying to acquire a fake passport so he can escape to New York, is so strung out on the hallucinogen that he fails to keep a crucial appointment. When he belatedly calls his contact, Tony Farrell (Kenneth Colley), the mob is waiting and identifies Chas's hiding place. Notwithstanding Chas's precarious situation, Turner is intent on completing the merger anyway.

Themes: Thematically, this is an exceptionally complex film, touching on such issues as identity, the ways we perform in public, doppelgangers, depersonalization, and the merging of identities. It's a multi-layered film challenging viewers to determine which and how many layers to attend to at once. It covers somewhat the same thematic territory as Bergman's Persona (1966), though Bergman does not appear to have been Cammell's chief influence. Instead, the references within Performance point to Jore Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov (i.e., Despair) as foremost in Cammell's thinking.

The film establishes its core issue early on: the idea of merger between strong and weak entities as a necessary requirement for survival. Each party in a well-chosen merger furnishes some quality or component that is missing from the other. The merger idea is first explored in a courtroom setting in relation to a corporate merger and later in a mob context when the betting parlor is forcibly taken over by "the firm." The parlor's owner complains to Flowers that the shop is his whole life and Flowers replies, simply, "Exactly Joey. Mine too. Mine too."

The two principal male characters, Chas and Turner, both have incomplete identities. In fact, their strengths and deficits are complementary to such an extent that viewers are led to believe that they represent halves of one formerly complete individual. Chas seems to have no identity separate from his acts of violence, as a mob enforcer, and he takes uncommon delight in his work. These acts of intimidation (nicknamed "performances" by the mob) are carried out by Chas with sadistic earnestness and the perfectionism of a highly anal-retentive individual. Even when he is making love, Chas steals glimpses of himself in a mirror as though searching for his other half.

Turner, the creatively blocked former rock star, by contrast, has a richer, more complete personality, but he's lost his inner demon, from which he drew his inspiration as an artist. Turner has everything except passion while Chas has only violent passion. Turner has an uncommon interest in exploring the depths of his personality and his male and female components. He cross-dresses, has long hair, thick lips, and sometimes wears lipstick. He has one female lover who is quite feminine and another quite boyish looking. Turner understands that he has lost his groove and wants it back. When Chas comes on the scene, all of the others seem to recognize him immediately, despite it being the first time they've met him. The little girl, Lorraine, even calls him dad. What they are recognizing is Turner's missing piece. Turner sets out to effect a merger, but in any merger one party's separate corporeal existence has to give way.

The tactic by which the aptly named Turner hopes to turn their two existences into one is through a psychedelic trip. Psychedelics, such as LSD or the psilocybin found in certain mushrooms cause distortions of consciousness that include "depersonalization." While tripping, the boundaries between self and not-self disintegrate. One may experience a melding together of one's mind with the universal stream or one's mind and that of a companion. Psychedelic users sometimes experience delusions of mental telepathy or thought broadcasting (both examples of mind-to-mind communication without the usual agencies of verbal communication or physical expressiveness). When Pherber dresses him up in women's clothing, Chas tries to resist acknowledging his feminine side and his homoerotic impulses, but it's to no avail. Turner's share of the allocation of personality resources between the two doppelgangers is the controlling interest. Turner's dominance is made evident during the music video-like segment, "Memo from Turner," in which Turner takes the role of Chas's mob boss. Chas acknowledges as much when he says, "You push the buttons." Turner is the executive function of the conscious mind while Chas is the driving passion of the subconscious mind. Chas says to Turner, "Personally, I just, you know, perform." A complete person needs both aspects of mind to function effectively.

Production Values: There's some great bits of dialog. One line has acquired some unanticipated humor. Chas, noticing Turner dressed up in tights and otherwise looking rather effeminate, opines, "You'll look funny when you're forty." Most of the thematic content is revealed piecemeal through the dialog, so viewers have to listen carefully.

The cinematography and editing for this film are quite exceptional – or, more precisely, were quite exceptional in 1966/7. The editing is the kind of frenetic, high-paced rapid intercutting that one associates these days with music videos. In fact, many people consider this film where music videos began – specifically, the segment near the end in which Jagger performs "Memo from Turner." When MTV first began, that film segment was used as their show's opening. Cammell later went on to make a few music videos, including one for U2. The editing in this film breaks down the usual barriers between past and present, reality and fantasy. Visually, the film is something of a rapid montage of kaleidoscopic psychedelic images. There are a lot of very creative mirror shots, especially in a sequence in which a mirror is used to superpose a female breast on Chas's chest and, later, Chas's face in place of his lover's visage.

The sound mix by Jack Nitzsche is absolutely incredible. It incorporates environmental sounds, fragments of human voices, and synthesized sounds, as well as a variety of pop idioms. Some of the performing artists include Randy Newman ("Long Dead Train"), Merry Clayton, Ry Cooder, and Buffy Saint Marie ("Died, Dead, Red), none of who were especially familiar names when the film was made. Besides the "Memo from Turner" segment, Jagger performs a version of an old Robert Johnson number, "Come on in My Kitchen."

James Fox does a bang-up job in the difficult role of Chas. His acting style was based on total immersion in his character. That proved costly for him in this instance. He was reportedly so disturbed by his experience in the film that he gave up acting for almost a decade, turning to charity work. Fox had already been in The Servant (1963) and later returned to screen work for Passage to India (1984), Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), The Whistle Blower (1986), The Russia House (1990), Patriot Games (1992), and The Remains of the Day (1993).

Mick Jagger is not nearly so highly regarded for his acting as for his musicianship, but this performance may at least be his best. It certainly helped that he was essentially playing a version of himself. He also appeared in Gimme Shelter in 1970, the same year that the present film was finally released. Donald Cammell knew Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones personally and got maximum mileage out of that relationship in casting this film. Anita Pallenberg was Keith Richard's wife and Michelle Bretton had lived with Mick Jagger at one time.

Bottom-Line: Performance launched or destroyed a number of film and music careers. Nicolas Roeg went on to make such gems as Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and The Witches (1989). Cammell, on the other hand, struggled the rest of his career to complete projects and to get his visions up on screen. Demon Seed (1977), with Julie Christie, was at least completed, though control of the project was ultimately wrested from Cammell's hands. Cammell wasted an inordinate amount of time collaborating on a project with Marlon Brando that never came to fruition. White of the Eye (1987) was the only film over which Cammell was able to retain complete control throughout. Wild Side (1995) was heavily edited before its initial release, although a later re-release entitled Donald Cammell's Wild Side (2000), spearheaded by his widow, China Kong, and Frank Mazzola, was far closer to Cammell's intent. Cammell committed suicide in Hollywood in 1996, shooting himself in the head in a manner reminiscent of the slaying of Turner in Performance.

Performance is a drug-enhanced, pulsating, challenging, wild-ride of a film. It's ranked #48 on the British Film Institute's list of the hundred greatest British films. Mick Jagger's character says to Chas, at one point in the film, "I'll tell you this. The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness. Right? Am I right? You with me?" That seems to have been Cammell's view on cinematic artistry as well. This film sometimes feels like a bizarre, chaotic mess, but isn't that what madness is all about?

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age