Quite the original and creative headline, considering we just bitched about it, huh?
Another ‘60s film recently excavated (we just reviewed “El Topo“) from the cellars of cobweb cult obscurity is the Nicolas Roeg, Donald Cammell collaboration, “Performance,” that starred a little guy named Mick Jagger in his second-ever starring role.
In many ways, the not-so-distant cousin film to Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona,” “Performance” examined similar themes of identity and the blurring, assimilation, and loss of self only set to the backdrop of gangsters in the U.K.’s swinging ‘60s.
In this psychedelic psychodrama, James Fox plays a gangster on the lam who finds himself taking refuge in the basement of rich, rock-star shut-in (Mick Jagger) and his coterie of gorgeous naked women (Keith Richards’s then-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and Michèle Breton). They take drugs, play a lot of dress-up and generally lose their marbles.
The back-story to the “Performance” set is unsurprisingly the stuff of legend, full of the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll stories you’d expect (“Stories so good I can’t possibly deny them,” Jagger has said). The film itself, with its ménage a trois’, casual drug intake, gender-bending drag scenes and jagged Burroughs-esque cut-and-paste editing techniques were extremely shocking and lurid for a 1970s audience.
“The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieved madness” – Mick Jagger as Turner
Predictably, insanity ensued onset: Jagger basically stole Pallenberg away from Richards (though he did prowl the set jealously to no avail), Pallenberg herself tried and failed to hide her growing heroin habit, and straight-laced James Fox was so traumatized by the whole experience he basically stayed away from any acting roles for almost a decade (after shooting wrapped he reportedly became an evangelist).
Though Warhol and other underground filmmakers had depicted sex and drugs onscreen “Performance” was one of the first to do so for a major studio and upon its first screening, Warner Brothers reportedly wanted the negative burnt. The screening was a, “great cinematic disaster,” according to the films producers and the studio was horrified by the violence and the fact that their bankable superstar lead (Jagger) didn’t enter the film until the mid-way point.
The success of “Easy Rider” has been suggested as the reason WB ever released the film. Even by today’s standards “Performance” is still extremely experimental, disjointed, hallucinatory and yes, as you might imagine is the case with ‘60s freak-out films, sometimes unintentionally funny (though more than often it’s just disconcertingly bizarre)
Decades later once Nicolas Roeg’s career was reevaluated and re-celebrated– his oeuvre includes the equally serrated and frenetic, “The Man Who Fell To Earth” (starring another rock star, this time David Bowie) and “Bad Timing” (which starred not-so-rock star Art Garfunkle) – the retroactive genius of “Performance’s” merits began to rest solely on his shoulders. But Roeg wisely gave the credit to Donald Cammell. While Cammell only made four films in 20 years (and then promptly shot himself in the head) Roeg said that the films identity-crisis issues were “lifelong interests”of the existentialist Cammell (though the jarring intercutting technique would be one that Roeg would go on to adopt for the rest of his career).
A precursor to people like Guy Ritchie and Jonathan Glazer “Performance’s” influence hangs heavy over modern fare like, “Gangter No.1” and “Sexy Beast” – a film that cast Fox as straight-laced, albeit homosexual, banker. Dialogue from the film has been sampled by the likes of pill-popping Mancunians Happy Mondays and post-Clash dance underachievers, Big Audio Dynamite.
Though an amusingly dated documentary on the new DVD – clearly made around this ’68-70 period – says Jagger had been writing and supervising his first film score, it was arranger/conductor and Spector-cohort Jack Nitzsche who actually wrote it. What I believe the short doc is trying to say is Jagger co-wrote (with Richards) the song, “Memo For Turner,” in the film and supervised the production of the song.
Cammell and Roeg gave Nitzsche free reign to experiment and excited by this prospect he purchased one of the first nine Moog synthesizers ever built. On the DVD, his son mentions that his dad brought it home and he was like, “A kid in a toy shop. I was just blown away cause no one had ever heard anything like that in the ’60s.”
Other than Nitzsche’s out-there, but not comically bizarre score, the movie contains performances by Buffy Saint Marie, bluesy instrumentals by Ry Cooder and much of it, score or otherwise, co-written by Nitzsche and diminutive, yet hefty singer-songwriter, Randy Newman.
The penultimate scene with Jagger’s “Memo For Turner” is essentially one of the first ever music videos. It lives within the film, but disembodied; the narration stops and the song is featured in a jolting, fragmented scene that stands alone from the rest of the picture.
Here’s a montage of Roeg films that includes parts of “The Man Who Fell To Earth”
