Performance (1970) With Mick Jagger

Coincidently I watched this again last night. I have seen it quite a few times over the years.

As Stepeanut says, the current HMV Blu Ray is recommended. It looks fantastic and has got very good reviews for picture quality.

I love the films of Nic Roeg, that run in the 70's is just amazing (although he only co-directed Performace). All quite different films although they all place with time and displacement. Someone like Christopher Nolan owes him a huge debt.

It's a brilliant piece of film-making and one of the best films ever made.

Mark Cousins said "Performance was not only the greatest seventies film about identity, if any movie in the whole Story of Film should be compulsory viewing for film makers, maybe this is it." (Story of Film was his 15 hour doc on the history of film).

Inspired quite a few songs as well, from B.A.D.'s E=MC2 to The Happy Mondays Mad Cyril.

 

Yep. The song pays homage to Roeg’s work throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, with references not only to Performance, but also to Walkabout, Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Insignificance.

 

I liked it because it was interesting to see what Jagger was like. Back then he was not seen as much off stage. Rumor has it that Memo did not show up on a Stones disc because Mick slept with Anita.

 

here is a star studded car commercial homage....

 

And then there is Comic Book Great, Alan Moore's, take on the story with:
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century #2 - 1969: Paint it Black

 

I think it works better as a prequel.

 

Indeed.

 

The hard to find but worth tracking down "Eureka' is his best film imo

 

Not that hard to find. It is available on BD in North America via Twilight Time, and in the U.K. via Eureka’s Masters of Cinema Series.

 

I had the house to myself last night, so, inspired by this thread, decided to watch Performance again, for the umpteenth time. Always a great experience.

Incidentally, John Bindon, who plays Moody in the film, was a real-deal actor-gangster. His Wiki entry makes for interesting reading:

John Bindon - Wikipedia

 

Very interesting bloke, who allegedly had a famous trick involving his 'percy' and beer mugs...

I've always loved this film, an amazing look at the Stones' world at the time

 

It deserves a Criteron release, imo

 

The MoC is perfectly fine, IMO. I love that label the way many Americans love Criterion.

 

I first saw this film on the arthouse circuit in the 80s, though I was already aware of its reputation. I've seen it a couple of times since.

It's a considerable achievement, and I think it was Nic Roeg's first venture into direction proper after having been a leading DP for several years.

The atmosphere of drugged decadence the film creates must have been strong stuff at the time: I think that, and Jagger's relatively small role, probably made it difficult to market. And the fact that, though it contains gangsters, it's hardly a gangster film. James Fox was so affected by the atmosphere on set (and while doing his 'research') that he quit acting for a number of years afterwards and joined a religious cult.

I'd say this is easily Jagger's best film appearance. It gave some people the mistaken idea that he could act and he went on to be truly dreadful in Ned Kelly.

 

Interesting points you make.
Let me say that Freejack looks easily worse than Ned Kelly & as another poster reminded me, Jagger acts quite possibly (at least) just as well in ' The Man From Elysian Fields' as in Performance.

 

I can’t get past how bad his Australian accent is in Ned Kelly. It’s made worse by the fact that he’s surrounded by native Australian actors. Really, it would have been better if he hadn’t fen made the attempt, but then that would have sounded odd, too.

 

Have you seen Freejack?

 

Yes: he's bad in that but then he's only in a supporting role and the film is fairly bad, anyway.

He plays a drag queen in the film Bent:

 

I knew about Bent but never watched it.
Ned Kelly is a great story but i just noticed on the Beat Zenith site that topically they state that Freejack should have been Free Admission.

 

Thanks for the tip. I didn't know it was available. Any extras?

 

A fair few, yes:

Eureka Blu-ray

 

Txs, will check it out!

 

I saw it at a second run neighborhood theater in Toronto (amazingly it still exists) shortly after it came out. At least half the audience walked out. Not me, I've always enjoyed it.

 

I'm not much of a Stones fan--I find them deplorably misogynistic--but "Memo from Turner" is a cracking tune.

 

It certainly is. I just find that sequence incongruous within the context of the film. Essentially, it’s a music video shoehorned in, 20 minutes from the end, just when things are hotting up. It doesn’t serve the plot in any way. On the contrary, the gangsters all stripping off is out of character and not a little silly.

It’s still a well-made sequence, and fun to watch. I can understand why they shot it. When you have a big-name rockstar like Jagger on the payroll, and a song of that quality, you’d be foolish not to use it somehow.