Performance ***** (1970, James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michèle Breton) – Classic Movie Review 2,990

Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell’s clever 1970 gender-bender teaser film Performance is a stunning eye-opener and turned out to be a milestone of British cinema with its provocative mix of perverted sex and violence.

James Fox stars as a sado-masochistic East London gangster called Chas Devlin, who is on the run from criminals and the cops, needing somewhere to lie low after a failed hit. He hides out at the guest house home of a sexually ambiguous one-time rock superstar called Mr Turner (Mick Jagger) and his two kinky girlfriends Pherber and Lucy (Anita Pallenberg and Michèle Breton).

This upmarket gangster melodrama is an intelligent and shocking study of decadence and decay in Seventies London society, filmed with extraordinary verve and style. The intriguing characters are persuasively portrayed, particularly by Fox, in work that recalls his role-reversal appearance in The Servant. However, Jagger, who performs ‘Memo from Turner’, is also very effectively used.

Performance is extremely violent and full of disturbing sexual content. Apparently disturbed by the film’s content, Fox was prompted after this movie abruptly to abandon film-making for 13 years (apart from one religious film) and to turn to evangelism.

Cammell is also the screen-writer and co-producer (with Sandy Lieberson of the Goodtimes production company) and Roeg is also the cinematographer. It’s an extraordinary movie.

Also in the cast are Stanley Meadows, Allan Cuthbertson, Ann Sidney, John Bindon, Anthony Valentine, Anthony Morton, Johnny Shannon, Ken Colley, John Sterland and Laraine Wickens.

Anita Pallenberg worked on the screenplay with Cammell, and, though did not plan to perform, she replaced the originally cast actress at the last minute because of a medical emergency.

She died on 13 June 2017, aged 73.

Sir Michael Philip Jagger celebrated his 8oth birthday on 26 July 2023. Jagger was born on 26 July 1943 and grew up in Dartford, Kent, England. He abandoned his studies at the London School of Economics in central London, to join the Rolling Stones. In 1970, he starred in the films Performance (1970) and Ned Kelly (1970), to a mixed reception.

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