Chas (James Fox) is a brutally sadistic mob enforcer. When a personal vendetta runs him afoul of both his boss and the law, he finds refuge in the home of the reclusive and enigmatic rock start Turner (Mick Jagger). While this sounds like a straightforward description of a plot, it barely scratches the surface of what transpires in Performance. What was sold to Warner Brothers with a treatment that merely said that it was ‘gangster meets pop star’, is actually a kaleidoscopic skull-f*ck of a film. The passing of thirty-six years since its release has done little to diminish its impact, nor has it dissolved the many legends of what happened during the making of the film.

Things get off to a rather unconventional start: scenes of a courtroom trial are jump-cut with scenes of Chas making love (if beating your lover and choking them with what looks like a bullwhip can be called making love) to his lounge-singer girlfriend, all accompanied by the unsettling blips and pulses of a Moog synthesizer. Once our character is established, the film proceeds like a typical British gangster film, loaded with Cockney accents and brute force. But the minute the fugitive Chas arrives at 81 Powis Square, he exits the real world and enters a carnival funhouse of hippie hedonism. It is here that the film ceases being at all concerned with linear storytelling and chooses instead to become cinema as pop narcotic. 

Turner initially wants to throw Chas out, seeing through his ruse claiming he is an entertainer, but soon comes to realize that Chas is as much a performer as he is. Turner’s muse (or as his lover Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) calls it, his demon) has abandoned him, forcing him to ameliorate his creative inertia with hedonism. Turner picks up right away what Chas is really about, and hopes that exposure to this dark personality might re-ignite his creative impulses. Subsequently Chas’ perception becomes unhinged under Turner’s ministrations, and both men explore the nature of their own seemingly interchangeable identities. Fantasy and reality blur, culminating in a scene known as Memo From Turner, in which Jagger becomes the mob boss, dictating orders to his flunkies via song (and creating what is arguably the first music video in the process).  

It is really impossible to adequately describe how sublime and transcendent Performance is. It defies any attempts to be categorized. It isn’t a gangster movie, it isn’t a youth movie, and it isn’t really a drug movie either. It does clearly show the influence of the French Nouvelle Vague, and the attempts at pharmaceutical mind-expansion undertaken by the flower children. But, as sure as Altamont followed Woodstock, Performance shows the Age of Aquarius in decline. Ultimately, Performance comes across like Bergman’s Persona on peyote.

Performance was the directorial debut of both Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg. It also marked the acting debut of Mick Jagger. The results these newcomers achieved were astounding: a pure expression of creativity that hadn’t been neutered by success or experience within the studio system.  It’s as if Freud’s idea of polymorphous perversity had been taken and applied to cinematic theory. For filmmakers who haven’t been instructed or indoctrinated into what is acceptable, everything is permitted. Cammell (also the screenwriter) drops references and motifs that few can comprehend entirely on first viewing, liberally quoting Argentinean fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, referencing Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte and playwright Antonin Artaud . There is an MFA’s worth of ideas on the screen and they are all delivered in the delirium of a fever dream or your worst drug nightmare.

While the movie is strongly supported by the acting talents of James Fox, Jagger is the real star of the film, devouring the camera at every opportunity. There’s a line in the film, where Chas says to Turner “You’ll look funny when you’re fifty”. Oh, how right he was. Before Jagger devolved into self-parody and mortgage company-sponsored concert tours, he was an icon. In Performance, his androgynous beauty is incandescent. It can be argued that it wasn’t much of a stretch for him to play a disaffected rock star, but Jagger’s Turner, while sometimes sounding like someone on the nod, is a far more complex and nuanced character than the real life Jagger has ever demonstrated being capable of in over forty years of public life. Jagger has been in other films, but this is one of only two (Gimmie Shelter being the second) worth putting on his C.V.

No review of Performance would be complete without mentioning the soundtrack. Former Phil Spector arranger Jack Nitzsche put his Wall Of Sound experience to good use in creating a unique soundscape that perfectly expresses the film's themes of internal dislocation and madness. Utilizing one of the first Moog synthesizers ever made, an array of talented musicians (Ry Cooder’s slide guitar is unmistakable), and proto-rappers The Last Poets,  Nitzsche’s score stands as one of the finest pop soundtracks ever produced.

Sadly there is an expression about candles that burn twice as bright. Many lives were permanently altered as a result of their involvement with Performance. Actor James Fox retired from acting not long after completing the film and became a Christian missionary. Michèle Breton, who played the third person in Turner’s ménage á trios, become hopelessly addicted to drugs, winding up destitute in Kabul for a number of years. Anita Pallenberg became a long term heroin addict. And sadly, writer/co-director Donald Cammell, never able to match the creative zenith reached with his debut film, took his own life in 1996. About the only people who emerged unscathed were Jagger (who would experience his own downfall at Altamont) and Nicolas Roeg, who went on to direct such influential films as Walkabout, Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth.

DVD Presnetation
I’m a big believer that if it comes down to either less than perfect picture or not releasing the film on DVD at all, I’ll go for a less than perfect picture. For a film that will never get a Gone With The Wind restoration treatment (hell, Warner Brothers tried their best to not even release this to theaters back in the day), the presentation of Performance is more than adequate. The colors are crisp in the well-lighted scenes, but sometimes, the darker scenes in Turner’s mansion come across a little too dark, but not impossible to determine what’s going on. And as one who has had to suffer through a full-frame VHS for the last ten years, the anamorphic 1.85:1aspect ratio of this DVD release is a gorgeous treat for the eyes.

Language tracks are limited to a single Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, which is no surprise and does the trick. Subtitles are also similarly limited to English.

Extras
There are three extra tidbits on the disc. First up is Influence And Controversy a twenty-five minute featurette of interviews with the producer of the film, Anita Pallenberg and the editors. Considering what happened to some of the principles, I guess it shouldn’t come as a shock that there was no participation from Jagger, James Fox or Michele Breton. But the featurette provides a nice background into what the directors were trying to accomplish. Next is a  Warner Brothers-produced promo from the time of the film’s  release called Memo From Turner, which is laughably outdated in today’s world of electronic press kits, but still an interesting curio. Lastly there is a full-framed trailer for the film.

Bottom Line
Performance is a one-of-a-kind film experience. If you have a high tolerance for movies that are elliptical and mildly obtuse, and if you enjoy the kind of film that rewards repeat viewings, than this is for you. This is the sort of movie that midnight screenings were made for.