The film that made you vomit: Mick Jagger and James Fox in ‘Performance’
Performance, the 1970 British crime drama directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, was once deemed so controversial that Warner Brothers held its release and demanded it be re-cut before insisting on a somewhat eventful test screening.
The film, co-starring James Fox and Mick Jagger, was supposed to portray a “violent and ambitious London gangster who, after carrying out an unordered killing, goes into hiding at the home of a reclusive rock star”. While the feature achieved its immediate goals, Performance descended into a sordid story which delved deep into the exploration of a dark relationship between sex and violence.
Set against the backdrop of the swinging London of the late 1960s, Performance is a stylistic tour de force that defies straightforward categorisation. At its core, the film traces the perplexing transformation of Chas, a violent gangster portrayed with gritty intensity by James Fox, and his surreal encounter with Turner, a reclusive rock star played with magnetic allure by Jagger in his acting debut.
Roeg’s directorial prowess is on full display as he masterfully weaves together disparate elements – from the frenetic energy of the city streets to the ethereal beauty of the English countryside and the pulsating rhythm of the soundtrack to the hallucinatory imagery that blurs the line between reality and illusion. Through a series of disjointed yet mesmerising sequences, Roeg invites viewers on a journey of self-discovery and existential reflection, challenging them to confront the fluidity of identity and the fragility of perception.
The film was produced in 1968, but given the extent of its sexual content and graphic violence, Warner Brothers held on to the completed project for a couple of years before deciding to release it in 1970. This, it would seem, was a bitter two-year struggle by directors Cammell and Roeg to get their project to the big screen as the nervous reluctance of the project’s financers debated the impact of the picture.
Putting the film to a damning test, Warner Brothers staged a preview screening in order to gauge reactions from cinema executives, members of the press, and other actors. What ensued was a mass walkout and, at one point, a film executive’s wife reportedly throwing up in the cinema. According to co-director Roeg, the post-screening party was a surreal affair: “The guests were walking away from us,” he once said in reflection. “We found ourselves in a room on our own; we were pariahs.”
Studio executives were left in a state of shock following the preview evening, a response that many had expected but dared not to believe. With the notoriety of the film building, Warner Brothers hired Frank Mazzola to join the project and perform a major re-editing job.
Finally, the film managed to resemble something that satisfied Warner and was given its theatrical release on August 3rd, 1970, to slightly mixed reviews. However, despite its issues, Performance stands as a testament to Roeg’s visionary approach to storytelling. With its unconventional narrative structure and avant-garde aesthetics, the film challenges conventional norms and expectations, inviting audiences to embrace the ambiguity and complexity of the human experience. Through its innovative use of imagery and sound, Performance creates something of a hypnotic sensory experience that lingers long after the credits roll, leaving viewers both exhilarated and unsettled by its haunting beauty.
Meanwhile, given the changes and international regulations of cinema, numerous different edits were rolled out in various countries to satisfy the rules of acceptability, which caused even more unintentional mystery around the original concept.
Despite its struggles, many argued that Performance was a film well ahead of its time, and in the late 1970s and 1980s, it started to gain the cult following it duly deserved. Fast forward 20 years after its initial release, and Performance had risen to the top of the pile, squirming its way through the mire of negative reviews that had once tried to pin it down into the abyss.
When co-director Cammell passed away in 1996, the film’s stock had risen to heights neither he, his partner in crime Roeg nor the wife of the film executive with vomit flashbacks in her mind could barely believe. Performance, believe it or not, is now regarded as a British classic.
Over the years, sensationalist stories of the filming had grown in tandem with its popularity, and many began to beg for answers. Were the sex scenes between Anita Pallenberg, Michele Breton and Mick Jagger real? Was this film the reason for Keith Richards’ slip into heroin addiction? Nobody really knew.
When interviewed for a new book, some of the questions surrounding the infamous film were put to Jagger, who simply fuelled the fire by saying: “All the stories around the filming of those scenes are so good I’m not going to deny any of them,” with a wry smile on his face.
As Jagger’s character Turner says in the film, “The only performance that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness.”
