Barnes & Noble

If Hollywood honchos had visions of Performance turning out as some hip version of an Elvis film, they certainly weren’t in sync with either the film’s star or its creators. What co-directors Nicolas Roeg and Donald Camell actually brought to the screen was a fun-house reflection of the tail end of the twisted '60s -- a self-consciously cinematic stew steeped in New Wave film sensibilities, rock 'n' roll decadence, and deliberate narrative ambiguity. Viva Las Vegas this wasn’t. Camell’s screenplay brings together Turner, a rock-star-in-seclusion, and Chas, a vicious criminal on the run. Drawn into Turner’s den of iniquity, Chas experiences a mind-altering transfer of personality with the debauched pop deity. Casting Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger as Turner and familiar actress-cum-Stones girlfriend Anita Pallenberg (who dated both Brian Jones and Keith Richards) as one of his hedonistic hangers-on, Roeg and Camell blurred the line separating their fiction from perceived reality. James Fox, employed against his usual upper-crust type, makes a lingering impression as Chas, the alpha thug whose arrival upends, and is upended by, Turner's idyll. What could have become simply a campy product of its time has aged -- thanks to Roeg’s striking cinematography and Jagger’s charismatic performance -- into a still audacious masterpiece. That contemporary rock 'n' roll remains as besotted with drugs, sex, and criminal activity as it was nearly 40 years ago hurts this film not a bit. For Roeg, Performance remains an early touchstone in a significant film career. As for Jagger, he has never been more effective on screen. Steve Futterman

All Movie Guide

Even in an era of cinematic experimentation, Performance stands out as a visually daring major-studio film that deals with questions of sanity and identity rarely touched on in mainstream filmmaking. The elements of Performance certainly looked attractive to studio executives at Warner Bros. -- a gangster on the lam hides out in the home of a reclusive rock star -- especially since that musician was being played by Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. But co-directors Nicolas Roeg (who also photographed) and Donald Cammell (who wrote the screenplay) had much more in mind than a walk on the wild side of swinging London. Chas (James Fox) is a sadistic thug who gains our sympathies only because men even crueler than he are out to kill him. After Chas arrives at the mansion occupied by Turner (Jagger) and his female companions Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and Lucy (Michele Breton), what looks like a decadent idyll fueled by drugs and group sex turns into a series of mind games in which Turner challenges Chas' sexual preference and core identity. Even the film's one musical number, "Memo From Turner," is a William Burroughs-like monologue in which Turner fantasizes taking over Chas' role as a mobster, spewing insults to his colleagues. The film's cult status has been fueled by subsequent films of its co-directors (for Roeg, Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Don't Look Now; for Cammell, White of the Eye), which explored similar themes employing the same kind of jagged editing and striking visuals. Tom Wiener

Product Details

• UPC: 085391116875
• Source: WARNER HOME VIDEO
• Region Code: 1
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 1:45:00
• Sales Rank: 19,524

Features:

DVD MENU