Performance seems all the more extraordinary when you consider that it was its directors’ debut film. And 50-odd years later, it continues to attract film fans with its sinisterly beguiling glow. But as much as polite society tried to restrain Performance, this ultimate celebration of excess refused to be bound. Repulsed, the shelved the picture for two years, a release only being secured after Cammell and Jagger petitioned the studio. When American execs saw the film, they talked of a pervading air of menace. Indeed, no British gangster film has come close to Performance for atmosphere. The on-set presence of real-life “chaps” such as John Bindon and David Litvinoff also leant the picture an authenticity completely at odds with the cock’er’nee swagger of The Italian Job. A film that so disturbed leading man James Fox that he quit the industry for a decade, Roeg and Cammell’s film also sowed the seeds of discontent between the Rolling Stones. And while you didn’t have to agree with the film’s suggestion that psychedelic drugs and androgynous sex might be the avenue to the better life, you couldn’t deny that it was an intriguing message.Ī taboo-lacerating work, Performance was made more beguiling still by its back-story. Gangsters, rock stars, ultra-violence - Performance was a vehicle for the verboten. But if you were brought up in a leafy suburb on a diet of Elkie Brooks and Abba, the world brought to life by Roeg and Cammell seemed utterly fascinating. For example, if you were raised in a “Bohemian atmosphere” similar to that of the film’s protagonists, the events depicted might not seem that remarkable. If this sounds like overstatement, it’s important to point out the roles environment and experience play in one's appreciation of Performance. And while his fellow rock star David Bowie was busy singing about Major Tom, Mick Jagger transformed from Rolling Stone to astronaut, his mission to take the human mind to places beyond the reach of all but the most potent hallucinogens. But then, when the movie began, it became immediately apparent that speech and song had ill-prepared me for how extraordinary Performance truly was.Ĭommencing with the launch of a rocket, Performance’s envelope-pushing made the previous year’s Apollo moon mission seem like a walk into town. In his introduction to the film, Cox made Performance sound every bit as exotic and brain-bending as the Mondays and BAD. Failing that, if you're British, you might have been lucky enough to catch it on Moviedrome, the BBC’s Sunday night movie strand hosted by Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid And Nancy). If you weren’t around when it was released, the chances are your first exposure to Performance was through one of the aforementioned songs. On Bummed, the second album from Manchester’s Happy Mondays, the track 'Mad Cyril' kicked off with James Fox intoning “We’ve been courteous”, before proceeding to make reference to both the movie and its infamous, unseen enforcer. Nor were Jones, Don Letts and Co alone in paying homage to Performance through song. Formed by Clash guitarist Mick Jones, BAD’s debut single paid tribute to the films of Nicolas Roeg, and in so doing not only summarised the director’s memorable debut but also spliced a number of Performance dialogue samples into the mix (“I don’t send solicitors’ letters,” “I don’t think I’m going to let you stay in the film business”). It’s not a perfect summary of the plot of Performance, but this, the first verse of Big Audio Dynamite’s 'E=MC2', says much about the cult appeal of the British psychedelic gangster movie.
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