‘Performance’: the British movie Martin Scorsese “didn’t understand” but loved anyway
Since Martin Scorsese was young, he’s been an avid lover of cinema. His early cinematic education helped him grow into a budding director, and after he failed to become a priest, he decided to turn to his first passion and study filmmaking.
Scorsese made several short films while in film school before completing his first feature, Who’s That Knocking At My Door, starring a young Harvey Keitel. Then, he was employed by indie cinema legend Roger Corman to direct Boxcar Bertha, which gave him vital experience.
From there, Scorsese was set. He released Mean Streets in 1973, which contained the songs ‘Tell Me’ and ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ by The Rolling Stones. As he continued making successful movies, he often used songs by the iconic British band, such as ‘Gimme Shelter’ in Goodfellas and The Departed, alongside countless other tracks. Scorsese even directed Shine A Light, a documentary showing the band backstage and performing in New York.
As you can tell, Scorsese is a tremendous fan of the Stones, using their songs at any chance he can get. Naturally, then, he has watched Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell’s 1970 film Performance, which starred Mick Jagger. The movie is one of many British films that Scorsese loves, although he once claimed that he “never quite understood it”.
Performance follows James Fox’s Chas, a gangster who, in a rage, shoots an old friend and subsequently flees the scene. Looking for somewhere to stay, he pretends to be a performer and manages to blag his way into an apartment where Jagger’s rock star character, Turner, is living with two women, including Anita Pallenberg’s Pherber.
There’s plenty of crime, a topic often explored by Scorsese, although Performance is also defined by its sex and drugs, making it a quintessential British ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ era movie. For Scorsese, he “didn’t understand any of the drug culture at that time.”
Still, he “liked the picture,” and found inspiration in one of the songs used in the film. The same version of ‘Memo From Turner’, a Stones song that Jagger re-recorded for Performance, is used by Scorsese in Goodfellas. Scorsese explained: “I love the music and I love Jagger in it and James Fox — terrific. That’s one of the reasons I used the Ry Cooder [song] ‘Memo to Turner’.
He continued: “The part where Jimmy [in Goodfellas] says, ‘Now, stop taking those fucking drugs, they’re making your mind into mush.’ He slams the door. He puts the guns in the trunk and all of a sudden you hear the beginning of this incredible slide guitar coming in. It’s Ry Cooder. And I couldn’t use the rest of it because the scene goes too quick.”
Thus, Scorsese might not have fully grasped Performance, but it still provided inspiration for one of his most popular and acclaimed films. His use of Jagger’s alternative version of ‘Memo To Turner’ shows just how much he loves The Rolling Stones and how vital their sound is to his work. In a promotional video made to advertise Shine A Light, Scorsese even claimed that “My films would be unthinkable without them”.
