Performance [DVD] [1970] [2007]

This film features great actors. James Fox shows what a great actor he is and cameo roles for Anita Pallenberg and Mick Jagger show how talented they are too! Directed by Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg make this film a classic British crime thriller. It was delivered very quickly!

Mick is ok in this.

This film is cool with a capital C. For me the star is not Mick Jagger, great icon that he is, but it's James Fox. As an old Harrovian he makes a surprisingly fantastic, convincing and sexy Cockney gangster called Chas. There is also a wealth of other famous faces such as John Bindon the infamous real life wideboy, also Anita Pallenberg, Billy Murray, Anthony Valentine and even two actors from Fawlty Towers. And let's not forget the dingy squats of Powis Square, nowadays sparkling with gentrification but in the early 70's of this setting in badly need of refurbishment.On a trivial note "You know I don't think I'm gonna let you stay in showbusiness" was a line used in Big Audio Dynamite's hit of 1986. It was lifted from a speech Chas makes in this film.The trippy direction of some of the movie will not be to everyone's taste but it helps to watch it at least twice to get it. Basically, the premise is an old fashioned gangster story of a button man getting too big for his boots and incurring the wrath of his boss.

very good film music tow

Stunned to realise that, after many, many years, Performance has finally come out on DVD - and not just any old version: the real, "proper", correct, undubbed version... I used to see this film regularly years ago.... early 70's... The Paris Pullman, The Electric Cinema and The Essential in London... Happy days. Then it disappeared, other than in the criminally dubbed version available previously on VHS. In about 1997 Alex Cox was going to show Performance as part of a series he was running on - I think - BBC2. A friend of mine and I called the Beeb and warned them that that the version they were likely to be about to show was the tarnished version. Give Alex C his due, they took it seriously and did some excellent work to try as far as possible to link an original soundtrack with the visuals. However, even here they missed a couple of the crass overdubs, but a very creditable 9 out of 10 for trying. This version? It has gone straight to 11 out of 10. Loads more could have been done as regards "extras".... interviews with Jagger, Fox, Johnny Shannon (if he's still around), Marianne Faithfull who was not in the movie but who has occasionally spoken about the film since then... Still, the slim extras at least include Sandy (Producer) Lieberson telling the story of the showing of the original cut to Warner Bros execs and their wives and concubines... hilarious! Now that is one showing I'd have loved to have attended!And, by the way, this is Cammell's film, not Roeg's. Roeg has, over the years, sought from time to time to distance himself from Performance. His photography is very, very good, but the whole philosophy, style, presentation, characterisation is strictly Cammell. The greatest British film since Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger rode the range.

A very strange film where 2 different worlds collide. James Fox as a Gangster on the run and Mick Jagger as a reclusive rock star. It has some good moments and I like the song by Jagger Memo From Turner. An odd 1960s film.Delivered on time and in perfect condition. Thanks.

Nick Roeg's stunning debut, for which the appearnce of Mick Jagger inthe central role has teneded to overshadow what was - and still is - a stunnng movie, that paved the way for two more decades of top flight pictures from Roeg.

A very dark film, not without slight humor, set in a drug-fuelled house of a fading rock star in 1960s London. James Fox gives a great performance as a gangster on the run from his murderous gangster friends who is gradually drawn into the nihilistic environment of Jagger's rock star character and loses his identity in the process. Fox's character is the most understandable in the film and the humor is in seeing him pretend to understand the drugged hippies he is living with but all the time knowing he has entered as very different world from the one he is used to. Without giving anything away, the ending is ambiguous and open to interpretation. It's difficult to say that it is enjoyable to watch due to the nihilism prevalent in the film, but it is certainly an interesting historical document of the time.

Das muss jeder Stones Fan haben!

A British gangster film, meets rock star decadence. I don't really know what it is all about, but Jagger is highly watchable. A surreal hallucinatory film.

So great to have a copy of this brilliant underrated and misunderstood film.

The plot concerns a London enforcer who is out of control and runs against his much more powerful boss. After a major incident where he runs afoul of his boss, the enforcer, James Fox, needs to hide out. He find's the residence of a recluse rock star, played by Mick Jagger. It proved to be the wrong place to hide.Urban legend has it that at the test viewing the wife of one of the Hollywood executives was so disturbed by the movie that she vomited. Most viewers will not be so moved by the movie. This film has a rare quality to challenge the viewer's deepest core values: about identity, about reality, about what it is all really about. Few films have this singular ability. Perhaps Eraserhead, but that movie challenged cosmic mataphysical beliefs; Performance is up close and personal. In the beginning the roles were set and definite; there were bad guys (Fox) and, well, people who were not bad (Jagger). The minute Fox entered into the rock star's house, everything changed. Fox entered the twilight zone where the roles and identities changed into another arraignment. In the end, he is captured by the gangsters who are looking for him. He is seen traveling in a car with his boss who will probably kill him. But is it James Fox in the car or Mick Jagger? It is not quite clear. Nothing is quite clear in this movie, which is why the movie executives at Warners kept the movie in the can for two years before its official release. They did not know quite what to make of the plot or performances. They originally wanted the negative destroyed, and it is easy to see why. The underlying plot and performances are unsettling; Jagger taps into a visceral nerve; he is perfectly cast as the recluse rock star, and his androgynous demeanor is perfectly matched to coincide with the underlying theme of the nature of identity. There is something more uncomfortable in the icing coldness of James Fox's character; his portrayal is masterfully chilling and a perfect contrast to the rarified atmosphere of the rock star's residence. Over half of the movie however is concerned with the sordid, violent criminal world of Chas, James Fox's character. At its essence Performance is not the gender-bending world of Mick Jagger but a very, very gritty look at London's underbelly, an unsavory world of dishonest lawyers and gangsters who kill on demand with a veneer of respectability.As another review has noted, this movie adversely affected almost everyone involved. After filming this movie James Fox was so rattled by te experience that he retired from movies for a number of years to proselytize Christianity; Anita Pallenberg (and Keith Richards, who sat in the wings while everyone else participated in the film) descended into heroin addiction, which they have yet to completely shake off. Don Crammel, the co-director, eventually committed suicide years later. Mick Jagger, the ultimate survivor, seems to be the only person not affected; after filming this movie he flourished, becoming one of the icons of the 70s. As it changed those who acted on the film and it will change the viewer. Maybe that's what upset that Hollywood wife.If purchased the consumer should chose the UK version. When marketed in the US, the voices of most characters were dubbed to suit US viewers. Perhaps it would have been a good idea if it was better executed. The results were less than satisfactory however and detracts from the quality of the film. There is no dubbing in the newest UK version and only the original sound is used. Even if it means purchasing a PAL DVD player, the effort is worth it.

Après l'originel "peace and love", Performance, film intimiste d'un succès trop confidentiel pour être gratuit, ajoute "keep cool" au classique "be yourself", soulignant avec l'aura des acteurs toute la difficulté de cette conciliation, pour mieux illustrer le mal de vivre de l'ère psychédélique ; un thème d'une brulante actualité.