FANTASIA OBSCURA: Mick Jagger Gives Us His Best Ever ‘Performance’
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, though you can’t always get what you want, you can never be sure if you’ve actually gotten what you need…
Performance (1970)
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
Directed by: Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg
Let’s get this out of the way up front: This discussion is very likely not for those with delicate sensibilities.
We all have to start somewhere. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones made their debut at London’s Marquee Club in 1962, while Cammell and Roeg made their debuts as directors with Jagger eight years later.
And oh, what a debut.
We open with a set of quick cuts establishing Chas (James Fox) as a man of violence; the way he makes love explicitly to his casual girlfriend Dana (Ann Sidney) with such brutal force, you almost imagine that we’ll never see her again after he’s done with her. (We don’t, but it’s because after she walks off to work he never calls her again.)
And Chas approaches his work much like his sexual technique, willing to smash things and people brutally. As an enforcer for the London criminal underground, he makes Ronnie and Reggie Kray look like choirboys; to dissuade a lawyer from going after “the business,” for example, he uses acid to erode the finish on his target’s Rolls, while giving the chauffeur (John Sterland) a forced straight razor shave of all his hair, leaving him bald and tied to the acid-washed car as a message.
He does this on behalf of Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon), a boss with plans for expanding his criminal empire that he feels requires a softer touch going forward. When, against Flowers’ orders, Chas kills new associate Joey Maddocks (Anthony Valentine) after a series of violent tussles, Chas has to make a run for it. Hunted by both “the business” and the coppers, Chas lays low after working the street by posing as a performer who weasels his way into a room for let in Notting Hill Gate.
He cons the person at the door to the mansion, Pherber (Anita Pallenberg), that he’s taking over for the room’s last tenant. While she lets him claim the room, the owner of the establishment, the reclusive former rock star Turner (Jagger), initially wants him gone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2VdQBMSYOU
Turner’s not too keen on the new lodger, not wanting him around to distract from his search for “his lost demon.” Having foregone all human contact except for his last two faithful groupies, Pherber and Lucy (Michele Breton in her last performance), Turner spends his time playing around, mostly with his hanger-ons, at one point with both of them in the bath.
Chas insists on staying, however, and soon the two gentlemen start sharing. First, they share room in the house, then stories, then the groupies, then some mushrooms out back that help them further share clothes and make-up (Pherber’s and Lucy’s as well as Turner’s) as well as minds.
Finally, Turner has been in contact long enough with Chas that he’s able to initiate the means of penetrating Chas’ psyche and getting straight into his head:
This leads to the show-stopping sequence where Jagger becomes Harry Flowers, singing “Memo from Turner” (NSFW) as he makes Chas reflect more deeply on his choices in life. Evoking the kind of magical realism found in Jorge Luis Borges‘ work (an author whose influence permeates the script and whose image turns up a lot on the set), the switching of minds between the two gives Turner the ability to find his lost demon, helping him start to make his way out of his isolation.
While the revelation also gives Chas insight, however, it doesn’t make him change his plans, to try and get fake papers to flee to New York. It’s a plan that Flowers and his associates are aware of, however, with the mob coming ever closer to finding Chas to give him “the business”…
In terms of the business of making the film, the movie had one of the more colorful histories ever involved for a production. Cammell, a painter who grew up knowing Aleister Crowley, decided he wanted to walk away from painting and put his energies into film making; through his friendship with Pallenberg, he was able to put together a package for what was pitched as a romp through Swinging London that would have featured Jagger and Marlon Brando.
As the story developed (with considerable input from Pallenberg), the film moved away from a version of A Hard Day’s Night with the Rolling Stones in it and more Brighton Rock with a Rolling Stone in it. Brando left, Fox came aboard, the soon the gang was all here…
…literally; Johnny Shannon personally knew some of the crew that had ran with the Krays and their associates, and one of the members of “the business,” Moody, was played by John Bindon, who’s criminal ties didn’t get in the way of his acting career or from being a roadie for Led Zeppelin later on. The film’s first half, focusing on Chas and the rackets, has a lot of technical input from London organized crime figures who knew Shannon personally (including one of Ronnie Kray’s male lovers), which gave the film a style and presentation that would go on to influence the likes of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino.
As for the second half, where the film is handed off to Jagger and his entourage as Fox moves among them, much of Cammell’s experience among the artists inhabiting Swinging London comes to play here. While audiences that caught any production that came out of Andy Warhol’s Factory might have felt a sense of déjà vu, mainstream audiences expecting the Rolling Stones in a Hollywood release were going to be shocked.
The studio certainly was; test audiences overwhelmingly hated the original cut, and Warner executives held back the film for a year and a half as they had Cammell recut the movie. (Roeg during this time was in Australia to film Walkabout.) The film was so delayed that Jagger’s second effort at acting, in the title role of the Australian frontier yarn Ned Kelly, actually got to screens before Performance did.
Remarkably, the final cut released still had plenty to shock and upset viewers despite the studio notes; Cammell’s interpretation of his marching orders met the letter of the law, if not 
the intent. The studio, during the chaotic time it found itself in when it released The Valley of Gwangi, may have declared “Ah, what the hell?” and just put it out there, not realizing they had a serious cult film in the making starting its rounds.
Despite Warner Brothers’ reluctance and revulsion, they released the film to an audience that were mesmerized and enticed when the shock finally faded. By 1999, the film took position # 48 on BFI’s Top 100 British Films, putting it in front of Brazil, A Clockwork Orange, and even A Hard Day’s Night, the movie Performance was supposed to be analogous to when the studio green lit it.
While the audience ultimately dug it, however, there was certainly no meeting of the minds on release between Warner Brothers and the directors, unlike Chas and Turner’s…
NEXT TIME: You thought the only monstrous Danish was one of those large pastries you get at the store, didn’t you…?
