Performance is a 1970 British film directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg. It stars James Fox as gangster Chas and Mick Jagger as reclusive rock star Turner. The film explores themes of identity, gender, and liberation through its surreal and psychedelic style as Chas enters Turner's decadent world of drugs and experimentalism. It uses techniques like non-linear editing, Dutch angles, and sound design to disrupt conventions and mirror the disorientation of altered states of consciousness.

2. Performance
 Released: 1970
 Director: Cammell & Roeg
 Stars: James Fox (Chas),
Mick Jagger (Turner),
Anita Pallenberg
(Pherber), Michèle Breton
(Lucy)

3. Bit of Background
 Performance is a film about the merging of
opposites:
 of male and female,
 of identities, of personae,
 of the apparently different worlds of gangsterism and
extreme artistic decadence that are both revealed to
function through the engine of the performative ritual
of violence.

4. Bit of background
 The explicit sex and brutal violence of
Performance were a breakthrough for British
cinema, explicitly linked in Chas's taste for rough
sex and his oddly sexualised whipping at the
hand of Maddocks (Anthony Valentine).
 These elements, and the frequent drug-taking,
seem to have caused Warner Bros to panic
about the film, shelving it for two years and then
re-editing it before its 1970 release.

5. Non-diegetic Soundtrack
 Performance is as challenging to listen to as it is
to watch, and it is the soundtrack that is perhaps
the most influential and groundbreaking aspect
of the film.
 Rather than being a totally 'composed' score or
a collection of 'found' pop songs, Jack Nitzsche's
soundtrack mixes together disparate and
'impure' musical forms,

6. Pop Film?
 Performance is also a 'pop' film, or, at least, it
has often been considered in this way.
 In this respect it is useful to compare it to AHDN
whereas Lester's film centrally stages the vibrant
charisma and pop celebrity of their star
protagonists, Jagger's film appearances are
much more troubling, indistinct and ill-at-ease.

7. Performance – A Simple
Story in Complex Terms
 The opening half-hour is a tour of the London underworld
of the late 1960s.
 Once gangster Chas (James Fox) enters the house of
reclusive rock star Turner (Mick Jagger), the film
becomes concerned with the disintegration of his
perceptions about himself and his world.
 The film becomes a jumble of jump-cuts, point-of-view
shifts, visual effects, elliptical editing and seamless
changes between fantasy and reality.

8. Two Halves – Two Worlds
 The first is clearly a classic East End gangster
genre. It includes all the classic iconography of the
gangster genre: protection rackets, hard men,
gang bosses, girlfriends, sharp suits violence,
rough justice and courtroom scenes etc.
 This has the effect of establishing a whole set of
expectations amongst the audience.

9. 2 half
nd
 The second half of the film goes onto deny all of these
expectations by taking the principle character Chaz
(James Fox) into a surreal world of drugs hippie culture
anarchy and decadence.

10. 2 Half
nd
 All the characters in Powis Square seem to
believe that their lifestyle is in some way
superior to Chaz’s.
 Chaz is literally turned on to Turner’s decadent
lifestyle, in a way that many people involved in
the drug subculture would recognise.
 Chaz soon comes to see however that Turner’s
lifestyle is fraught with traps and obstacles of its
own.

11. Representations
 Society
Corrupt / hypocritical / violent.
Gangsters operate on the business model
(hostile takeover – “business is business”).
Progress is not forward (“he’s an out of date
boy”).

12. Representations
 Swinging ‘60s
Darker side to counterculture and
experimentalism:
drugs
gender subversion
crime
search for liberation through risk taking (sex,
drugs & rock ‘n’ roll).

13. Representations
 Masculinity – is a ‘performance’.
There is a dark side represented through
violence, exploitation.
Macho man (Chas/Fox)
Sex god (Turner/Jagger).

14. Representations
 Femininity – is a ‘performance’
 Females are presented as intelligent,
voracious and ready to play.
Middle class women.
Ethnic minorities are marginal characters.

15. Representations
 Celebrity / Identity
Turner is trapped and needs an audience to
escape – he needs Chaz.

16. Themes
 Freedom/restriction – Chas trapped by
gangster underworld finds freedom in the
character of Turner – only to discover
Turner is trapped himself (by drugs and
celebrity)
 Crime – A way to power. No different to
business. Linked to celebrity in terms of
performance.

17. Themes
 Identity – As a game, a performance.
Use of mirrors to suggest a fractured or
shifting identity.
 Gender – As ambiguous and fluid. Not
fixed. Examples of role play.

18. Themes
 Sexual experimenting - threesomes /
bisexuality / homosexuality.
 Drug use – Presented as a key to
liberation from social constrictions (gender
identity, social roles).

19. Psychedelic style (represented as
revolutionary, shocking, decadent)
 Techniques used to shock and disorientate the
audience.
 Sound design- Abnormal disrupts realist narrative
 Dutch angles – Create sense of mental abnormality extreme
psychological conditions.
 Non diegetic inserts- Creates disruption of realist narrative
 Montage
 Disruption of continuity style-
 Cutting in on action
 Juxtaposition of images (editing style rapid, symbolic)
 B/W film stock
 Non linear narrative – images out of sequence

20. Symbolism
 Mirror images - suggest shifting identity
 Photographs - cameras capture identity
 Music Suggests atmosphere and descent into
decadence
 Non diegetic inserts - (breast/blood/sex)
 Sound - Reinforces disruption of the senses and
symbolises altered states