Film
Cinema Rediscovered: Performance
- Director
- Nic Roeg, Donald Cammell
- Certificate
- 18
- Running Time
- 105 mins
This classic of sixties British cinema (filmed in 1968, but released two years later) has James Fox cast against type as a sadistic gangster on the run who rents a room in the Notting Hill abode of washed-up sexually ambiguous rock star Mick Jagger. Highly controversial in its time for the explicit sex’n’drugs, Performance has been rightly acclaimed as a meditation on identity, despite its lapses into pretentiousness, and is superbly shot by Nicolas Roeg. Rolling Stones enthusiasts will also be aware that Jagger caused a rumpus by getting it on with Keef’s ol’ lady, Anita Pallenberg, in the explicit sex scenes. Legend has it that outtakes from these subsequently won a prize at a Danish pornography festival.
This Cinema Rediscovered screening of a 35mm print of the film is part of the The Balance of Things: the Cinematic Imagination of Nic Roeg season.
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