Continuing to backtrack through the work of director Nicolas Roeg, and I didn’t realise he co-directed Performance (1970) with its writer Donald Cammell. First, I was surprised to see the typically urbane and upper crust James Fox convincingly play a cockney gangster, a real sadistic rotter who gets into a bit of sticky bother with his masters, leading him to go on the run. When Fox’s gangster winds up in a spare room, hiding out, in a town house owned by reclusive musician Turner (Mick Jagger, not really acting, just existing as his charismatic pop persona) who is in a relationship with Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton. With the help of hallucinogenic drugs, some sort of transference is visualised growing between rock star and gangster. I have no idea what it all means, but it’s wildly visual in changing film stock, editing and framing, all building up to a proto-music video (before there were music videos) in the ‘Memo From Turner’ sequence. All I can say is that it’s a trip.
VHS Tracking 