Product Description

Psychological drama about a criminal on the run who hides out with a rock star.Running Time: 105 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 085391116875 Manufacturer No: 111687

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14309 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2007-02-13
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
"I like that. Turn it up!" Performance is the Altamont of '60s cinema; psychedelic and hallucinatory, decadent and depraved, polymorphous-perverse. And you can dance to it! Melding the sex, drugs, and rock & roll ethos of swinging '60s London with the gangster film, Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's genre-bending cult classic is so mind blowing that star James Fox did not act in a film again for nearly a decade. Fox stars as Chas, an "out of date" enforcer for crime kingpin Harry Flowers. Chas is a "nutcase," who likes "a little cavort," but when he kills someone he wasn't supposed to, he is forced to go on the lam. He takes refuge in a basement room belonging to Turner (Mick Jagger), a former rock star who has "lost his demon" and now lives as a recluse in his dilapidated house with his secretary/lover, Pherber (Anita Pallenberg, who was Rolling Stones bandmate Keith Richards' girlfriend at the time), and an androgynous French girl (Michele Breton). They enjoy a little cavorting themselves. In these drug-strewn surroundings, worlds collide and identities merge. "I know who I am," Chas tells Harry early on. He (and viewers) will become less sure as Performance unfolds. Completed in 1968 but shelved for two years, Performance was originally rated X and has been redesignated R. But it's still strong, potent stuff. With its elliptical editing, mirror images, and echoed dialogue that bridges the two worlds, Performance may not become clearer with repeat viewings, but there are fresh discoveries to be made each time. The killer soundtrack features Randy Newman, Ry Cooder, rap revolutionaries the Last Poets, and Jagger's own astounding "Memo from Turner." "I know a thing of two about performing, my boy," Turner tells Chas at one point. "The only performance that makes it... that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness." Performance makes it all the way. As Roeg is quoted in a featurette produced for this DVD, "After all this time, its mystery is part of its magic and attraction." --Donald Liebenson

Customer Reviews

Proof that you can't do EVERYTHING just cause you're beautiful
Looking back in sentimentality, people have a tendency to regale all things connected to happier times gone by, primarily youth: drugs; Rolling Stones, Anita, rock and roll, even anything British. (I watched this movie because of references to my favorite author Jorge Luis Borges).

But take away all the simulacra, strip away all the "brand names" and look at the film purely as a work that should stand on it's own, and it falls flat on it's face.

Atrocious acting from the two big stars, added to a bad screenplay from England that gets further diluted in Hollywood before its release (on the dvd extra, one of the creators mentioned they needed some more scenes and they just happened to have some extra footage of Mick spraying a blank wall, so they just threw it in), and cinematography that is without form or function. Is it a performance or is it a happening? It just looks like one massive blob of shots slapped together in the editing room - frantically shifting from one to the next in order to hide the fact that there is no internal logic to the scenes- in an attempt to approximate a drug-induced haze.

James Fox's convincing thuggery is the only real star in this film, for it only serves to highlight all that is missing from Mick and Anita. I'm sure all this sounded like a good idea when the filmmakers were hanging out in a room high on an epic trip. They wanted to take us along for a righteous ride.

But all we got was 105 minutes of coming down.

CRITERION, PUT THIS MASTERPIECE IN YOUR COLLECTION!
Let me be clear right at the outset: Anyone with an aesthetic sense can see that Roeg and Cammell's PERFORMANCE (1970) is one of the ten greatest films ever made. THIS VERSION, however, is atrocious for three important reasons:

1.) The Warner Bros. DVD superimposes a "remastered" soundtrack over the original, dubbing the actor's voices and substituting "cleaned-up" versions for the original songs. As a consequence, the voices are not always synchronized and we lose the gritty sonic texture of the original.

2.) This edition omits Turner's declaration, "Here's to Old England!" during "Memo from T."

3.) It excises the scene in which Chas terrorizes a pornographer. Why? To receive an R-rating, perhaps, from the M.P.A.A.?

In sum, this version is an unnecessary operation on a perfectly healthy patient.

Joseph Suglia, Ph.D., the greatest author in the world

CRITERION, PUT THIS MASTERPIECE IN YOUR COLLECTION!
Let me be clear right at the outset: Anyone with an aesthetic sense can see that Roeg and Cammell's PERFORMANCE (1970) is one of the ten greatest films ever made. THIS VERSION, however, is atrocious for three important reasons:

1.) The Warner Bros. DVD superimposes a "remastered" soundtrack over the original, dubbing the actor's voices and substituting "cleaned-up" versions for the original songs. As a consequence, the voices are not always synchronized and we lose the gritty sonic texture of the original.

2.) This edition omits Turner's declaration, "Here's to Old England!" during "Memo from T."

3.) It excises the scene in which Chas terrorizes a pornographer. Why? To receive an R-rating, perhaps, from the M.P.A.A.?

In sum, this version is an unnecessary operation on a perfectly healthy patient.

Joseph Suglia, Ph.D., the greatest author in the world