For de som så Performance 03.12.2024 eller er nysgjerrige - her er en omtale fra Thorkell Ottarson som går mer inn på historien bak filmen og hva den handler om:
The story of the making of this film is as interesting as the making of Apocalypse Now (1979). To start with we have two directors who are responsible for two totally different aspects of the film. Donald Cammell for the actors and the story and Nicolas Roeg for the look and the style. In the end, everyone agrees that the look and the style is great but some have problems with the story (well most frankly).
WB wanted a A Hard Day's Night kind of film just with The Rolling Stones instead of The Beatles. Well what they got was a psychedelic and an anarchistic version of Persona - with a hard on. A film that breaks all rules and fits in no genre. A film that they would never ever be able to sell to the public that loved A Hard Day's Night. And to make it worse, they could not get The Stones to write more than one song for the film because (as the story goes) Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg had sex for real on film while Anita Pallenberg was Keith Richards' girlfriend (some of the scenes were so pornographic that the lab refused to develop them and may even have destroyed some of them). Richards refused to take part in the music so the band was out. What we have is one song with part of the The Rolling Stones (with Ry Cooder on guitar instead of Keith Richards) and a half song with Mick Jagger playing and singing solo. Hardly the musical they were hoping for.
Warner Bros. were shocked when they saw the original cut (a cut we still have not been able to see, even if they may have it in the vaults). A wife of one of the executive vomited with shock and most of the audience walked out. They were asked to re cut the film but Nicolas Roeg was already busy with preparation for Walkabout and Donald Cammell had started another project. It was up to editor Frank Mazzola to try to make something out of this and what we have today is what he came up with. Even more frantic editing and a scene of Mick Jagger spaying on the wall so we would see him earlier in the film. Still even that did not get the film screened. It was vaulted for 2 years. The rising star of Mick Jagger (who is great in the film) however forced them to sell it, somehow and they did it rather brilliantly - by simply selling it as a mind fuck instead of trying to dress it up as anything else.
This is the second time I watch Performance but I'm not sure I understand it any better. I have however come to the conclusion that it does not matter. It's best just to get lost in all its coolness. And it is cool. There are in fact very few films that are as cool as Performance.
What I have gathered from the film is that it deals with identity. A lot of our identity is performance. Chas performs in his work as a gangster just as Turner performs as an artist. How much of their performance is part of them? How much is hidden? What is hidden? How much of us is borrowed from others? What is left? And the most important question - do the answers to these questions really matter? "Nothing is true, Everything is permissible." Go with it. Stop letting society define you. Don't let the world define you. Don't even define yourself! Be like the Assassins who believed they were dead and could do anything because of it.
The film can also be seen as a comment on homosexuality and the fear of coming out. Reading it that way we could see Chas and Turner as one and the same person, one hidden (Turner) and the other one public. Once the public person has to hide the hidden person comes out.
Mark Cousins says in The Story of Film: An Odyssey, "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." I kind of agree with him because the film is a great example of how to break all rules and think outside the box. Take chances and think fresh. Something modern cinema needs to do much more. "Nothing is true, Everything is permissible" should be the motto of all film makers and it is the heart of this crazy masterpiece.
