Sex. Drugs. Gangsters. The London of the 1960s was an insane place to be, and Performance - which will be showing this Thursday evening at the New Jersey Film Festival - is an interesting way to experience an era long since past.
Performance was directed by Nicolas Roeg (The Man Who Fell To Earth, The Witches) and Donald Cammell (Wild Side, Demon Seed). The film tells the story of Chas (James Fox, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Sexy Beast), a rather brutal enforcer for a London crime boss. After an accidental killing, he is forced to go on the run. Chas decides to hide out in the home of Turner (Mick Jagger), who is, shockingly enough, a reclusive and burned out rock star. As Chas makes struggles to find some way to escape almost certain death at the hands of his former bosses, he finds himself drawn more and more into Turner's world of unrestrained hedonism.
In order to gain funding for the film, Cammell and Roeg convinced Warner Brothers they were making an imitation of A Hard Day's Night but featuring the Rolling Stones instead of the Beatles. The film that was eventually produced drew far more from Kenneth Anger - known for experimental/sexual films such as Fireworks and Scorpio Rising - than Richard Lester, who directed A Hard Days Night. It featured un-simulated sex and drug use, strong male homosexual and female bisexual undertones, and a jump-cut-heavy editing style for which Roeg would later become famous. When Warner execs saw the completed project, they shelved the film for two years. In 1970, after the success of Easy Rider, the studio decided to release the film, but they did little to promote it, which led to its critical and commercial failure. But with the advent of home video in the eighties, the film was finally able to be widely seen, and it built up a strong cult following.
Filmed in 1968 as the swinging London scene was ending and many young people were wondering "what comes next," the film is primarily about the elusive nature of identity - not just of the characters, but of the medium of film itself. It begins in Chas' world - a world of macho violence and suppressed desires - only to shift to Turner's more hedonistic world. The two parts of the film complement each other, creating a sort of Male and Female half. Furthermore, the film uses cut-up editing, industrial noise and musical interludes to help throw the audience out of balance as Chas gets sucked deeper into Turner's world.
Still not yet released on DVD, Performance is a fascinating view of a time and place long since gone. This film is certainly not for everyone, but for those with an appreciation of the bizarre, this is certainly a Performance worth experiencing.
See http://njfilmfest.com/ for times and location.
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