Performance is a British film made in 1968 but not released until (1970). It is directed by Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg. Donald Seaton Cammell (January 17, 1934 – April 24, 1996) was a Scottish film director who enjoys a cult reputation thanks to his debut film Performance, which he co-directed with Nicolas Roeg. ... Nicolas Jack Roeg, born on August 15, 1928 in London, is an internationally-known cinematographer and film director. ... James Fox (born 19 May 1939) is an English actor. ... Sir Michael Phillip Mick Jagger (born July 26, 1943) is an English rock musician, actor, songwriter, record and film producer and businessman. ... Bernard Alfred (Jack) Nitzsche (Chicago, April 22, 1937 – Hollywood, August 25, 2000) was an integral presence in the history of popular music in the 20th century. ... “WB” redirects here. ... is the 215th day of the year (216th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... // Events February 11 - The film The Magic Christian, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr premieres in New York City. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971). ... // Events February 11 - The film The Magic Christian, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr premieres in New York City. ... Donald Seaton Cammell (January 17, 1934 – April 24, 1996) was a Scottish film director who enjoys a cult reputation thanks to his debut film Performance, which he co-directed with Nicolas Roeg. ... Nicolas Roeg, born Nicolas Jack Roeg on August 15, 1928 in London, is an internationally-known film director. ...

Plot

Chas (James Fox) is a "performer," an ultra-violent enforcer for an East London gang (led by Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon). Chas is involved in a particularly brutal attack that the boss has not specifically requested which angers Flowers. When the boss brings up the problem to Chas, pointing out that his enthusiasm has made him forget who he works for, Chas decides to leave his boss' employ. Being a mobster, Flowers is not particularly keen on this idea so he sends some hitmen to punish Chas for his impudence. After they brutally torture Chas, he murders one of them. As a result, Chas goes on the run, both from the police and from his former colleagues. Chas dyes his hair red and finds himself "a perfect little hidey hole" in the basement of a house owned by a reclusive, eccentric washed-up former rock star named Turner (Mick Jagger) who lives there with his female friends Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and Lucy (Michele Breton). Chas and Turner are initially repelled by each other, but come to see that the worlds of the rock star and the gangster are not as different as they first appear. James Fox (born 19 May 1939) is an English actor. ... Sir Michael Phillip Mick Jagger (born July 26, 1943) is an English rock musician, actor, songwriter, record and film producer and businessman. ... Anita Pallenberg (born January 25, 1944 in Rome, Italy) is a model, actress and fashion designer. ...

History

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. As the project evolved the story became significantly darker. Cammell was heavily influenced by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (a portrait of Borges 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. Cammell and co director Nicolas Roeg 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 and drug use. Donald Seaton Cammell (January 17, 1934 – April 24, 1996) was a Scottish film director who enjoys a cult reputation thanks to his debut film Performance, which he co-directed with Nicolas Roeg. ... Marlon Brando, Jr. ... Fan-Tan, or fantan (Simplified Chinese: 番摊; Traditional Chinese: 番攤; pinyin: ) is a form of gambling long played in China and among Chinese immigrants to America and other countries. ... Borges redirects here. ... Nicolas Jack Roeg, born on August 15, 1928 in London, is an internationally-known cinematographer and film director. ... “WB” redirects here. ... This article is about the rock band. ... The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 as part of their first tour of the United States, promoting their first hit single there, I Want To Hold Your Hand. ... A Hard Days Night (1964) is a British comedy film originally released by United Artists, written by Alun Owen and starring The Beatles during the height of Beatlemania. ...

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. “WB” redirects here. ...

Performance was finally released in 1970 after several recuts and changes in Warner's administration.

The film was released on DVD for the first time on February 13, 2007.

Critical Reputation

On its release the film received mixed reviews to say the least. 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 '70s and '80s 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 an "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. Richard Warren Schickel (b. ...

Influence

When Performance was released, several aspects of the film were extremely innovative, and historically it can be seen as a precursor to MTV type music videos and many popular movies of the 1990s and 2000s. This movie has a soundtrack with The Rolling Stones, Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, The Last Poets, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Merry Clayton. The MTV logotype, often used in different, less stylized, forms. ... A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song. ... The Last Poets is a group of poets and musicians who arose from the late 1960s African American civil rights movements black nationalist thread. ... 7 Buffy Sainte-Marie Buffy Sainte-Marie (born February 20, 1941) is a Canadian First Nations musician, composer, visual artist, educator and social activist. ... Merry Clayton (born December 25, 1948 in Gert Town, New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American gospel singer. ...

• Performance was the first feature film to employ the cut-up technique (although the technique was employed in experimental shorts in the 1960s and 1970s, most notably by Antony Balch). Directors Cammell and Roeg also went on to use this technique in their following movies, before it became commonplace in popular cinema.
• The gangster aspect of Performance has been imitated by many popular directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, Jonathan Glazer and more.
• Performance pushed boundaries by featuring extremely explicit sex scenes and use of drugs, both which have been rumoured to be real instead of simulated. Although Andy Warhol's (and other underground filmmakers') films had featured such behaviour before Performance, it was unheard that such things appeared in a major studio production.
• Big Audio Dynamite's song "E=MC²" includes extensive dialogue samples from Performance. The song Further Back And Faster by Coil also samples dialogue from the film.
• Happy Monday's second album, Bummed, features several songs inspired by the film, including "Moving In With', "Performance", and "Mad Cyril". "Mad Cyril" is explicitly inspired by the film and included the following dialogue samples:
  • "I like that, turn it up"
  • "It was Mad Cyril!"
  • "We have been courteous"
  • "I need a bohemian atmosphere"

Also inspired by the movie were the '79 Mod Revival act, [Secret Affair] whose East End following known as 'The Glory Boys' were based on the South London gangsters portrayed in the film and was the title of their first 20 top album. The cut-up technique, also known as fishbowling, is an aleatory literary technique or genre in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text. ... Antony Balch (1937-1980) was a British film director and distributor, best known for his screen collaborations with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs in the 1960s and the 1970s horror film, Horror Hospital. ... Donald Seaton Cammell (January 17, 1934 – April 24, 1996) was a Scottish film director who enjoys a cult reputation thanks to his debut film Performance, which he co-directed with Nicolas Roeg. ... Nicolas Jack Roeg, born on August 15, 1928 in London, is an internationally-known cinematographer and film director. ... Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, actor, and Oscar winning screenwriter. ... Guy Ritchie (born 10th September 1968 in Hatfield, Hertfordshire[1]) is an English writer-director. ... Jonathan Glazer Jonathan Glazer (born 1966 in London) is an English director of films, commercials and music videos. ... Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 — February 22, 1987), better known as Andy Warhol, was an American artist who became a central figure in the movement known as Pop art. ... Big Audio Dynamite (later known as Big Audio Dynamite II and Big Audio, and often abbreviated BAD) was a British musical group formed in 1984 by the ex-guitarist and singer of The Clash, Mick Jones. ... E=MC² is a song written by Mick Jones, the guitarist and singer of The Clash and performed by his post-Clash band Big Audio Dynamite. ... A coil is a series of loops. ...

• In keeping with the intellectual bent of Jagger's character, legendary Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges is quoted numerous times during the film.

Borges redirects here. ...

External links

• Performance at the Internet Movie Database
• Performance by Colin MacCabe (book)

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ...

Further reading

• Ali Catterall and Simon Wells, Your Face Here: British Cult Movies Since The Sixties (Fourth Estate, 2001) ISBN 0-00-714554-3