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Topic: Performance /Hard Days Night Return to archive
May 3rd, 2004 03:12 PM
Ten Thousand Motels Spool for scandal

BRIAN PENDREIGH


YOU ONLY HAVE TO LOOK AT FOOTAGE of Beatles or Rolling Stones fans to realise that no-one does hysteria like they did in the 1960s. Perceived battles between the relatively clean-cut Beatles and the louche and dangerous Rolling Stones fuelled the frenzy. But the gulf between the two bands was real in many respects, and never more starkly illustrated than in their early films.

The Beatles’ wacky antics in A Hard Day’s Night made a fortune for United Artists and suddenly every Hollywood studio was fast-tracking a movie with one of these groovy new English groups, from Freddie and the Dreamers to sugar-sweet Herman’s Hermits.

Warner Bros seemed to have hit the jackpot when they landed the Beatles’ only real rivals, the Rolling Stones, or at least Mick Jagger. But they had no idea just how different Performance and A Hard Day’s Night would be. A preview screening of Performance with a paying, but unsuspecting, public audience in Santa Monica, California, ended in uproar. From the way the opening sequence cut back and forth between a Rolls-Royce in the countryside and scenes of violent sex, it was obvious this was no simple imitation of the Beatles’ capers .

A Hard Day’s Night was pop, this was full-frontal sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, with hardcore crime and GBH added to the mix. Mick Jagger played a decadent rock star with two live-in girlfriends, one of them played by Anita Pallenberg, who was the girlfriend of Keith Richards. James Fox was the East End gangster who turns up at Jagger’s home looking for somewhere to hide. During the perverse power and sex games that follow, the identities of the two men begin to merge. But, on first viewing, the film never got that far.

Someone called out in the darkness: "This is obscene." At one point, when Fox’s character received a violent beating, the wife of one of the executives threw up over her neighbour’s shoes. The screening was stopped, money refunded and there was even talk of destroying the negative to save the world from further indignity and corruption. However, in the face of potentially large profits, concern for public morality didn’t last too long. If A Hard Day’s Night had been an element in Warner’s decision to finance Performance, then the unexpected success of Easy Rider and its drug-dealing hippie anti-heroes was the key factor in the decision by a new Warner management team to release their film in 1970, two years after it was made.

Performance prompted a host of vitriolic reviews, with Time’s critic describing it as, "the most disgusting, the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing" and New York magazine calling it, "the most vile film ever made".

Many of the principal figures seemed to take the attacks to heart. James Fox gave up acting for a decade and sought solace in religion. Others sank into heroin addiction, several killed themselves, deliberately or accidentally.

But the film refused to die. Over the decades, stories spread about its drug and sex-fuelled shoot. Some were fiction, most were true. In the late 1990s, Kevin Macdonald made a documentary about it and two books were published. The film found a new audience on video and its critical reputation grew as well. Colin MacCabe was not alone in declaring it, "the best British film ever made". And now, almost 40 years after it was made, it is being re-released in cinemas.

Some say the film, and the vision of the Scot behind it, was simply too far ahead of its time. After Performance, Donald Cammell made only three more, relatively obscure films, before committing suicide in 1996.

Cammell was born in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle in 1934, the son of Charles Cammell, a dilettante poet, champion fencer and old-fashioned gentleman-romantic, who inherited and lost the Cammell Laird shipbuilding fortune. Occultist Aleister Crowley was a family friend. Charles Cammell wrote his biography and Donald later put it about that Crowley was his godfather.

Donald Cammell showed prodigious artistic talent, became a successful portrait painter and joined the new social elite of Swinging Sixties London. He conceived the basic premise for Performance with his friends Mick Jagger and Marlon Brando in mind, though James Fox would subsequently replace Brando. Crucially, the setting switched from America to London, where East End criminals mixed with pop and film stars, footballers and photographers as part of a new, predominantly proletarian, celebrity class.

Cammell wrote the screenplay. Though a great visionary, he lacked discipline, and until his death refused to acknowledge any dividing line between life and art, contemplating suicide for years and making allusions to Performance as he lay dying.

He had never directed a film before and his producer Sandy Lieberson had never produced one. Nicolas Roeg, however, was one of Britain’s leading cinematographers and agreed to be co-director, while Cammell’s younger brother, David, who had a background in commercials, became associate producer, shouldering the responsibility for keeping the film on track. Performance was shot entirely on location with a cast that included pop stars and real-life gangsters, but few trained actors. Warners allowed the makers an incredible degree of freedom and it was half-way through shooting before executives saw footage of Jagger frolicking naked in a bath with both Pallenberg and Michèle Breton. They suspended filming and threatened to sue Cammell and Roeg for departing from the approved script.

Meanwhile, the film processing laboratory decided that the sex scenes contravened the obscenity laws and threatened to destroy the negative. Keith Richards was incensed with jealousy and would prowl around outside, waiting for Pallenberg. David Cammell refutes rumours that the sex was real. "There was nudity and we did have a problem getting it processed, but there wasn’t actual, physical sex," he says.

It was rumoured that Pallenberg went above and beyond the call of acting duty not only with Jagger, but also with Donald Cammell, who also allegedly had a relationship with Breton. "There may have been some sort of relationship there and there may have been some sort of relationship with Anita," says David Cammell. "I know they were all good friends ... I think you just have to use your imagination on that one."

The film was edited and re-edited, and Warner Bros changed hands. Finally the new owners decided to release Performance on an unsuspecting world. The stories that surround the film are fascinating, but it would not have survived and prospered critically if it were the mess the production history suggests. David Cammell believes its belated acclaim is largely due to its authenticity, possibly to the naivety of its makers and to the extra depth lent by his brother’s creativity. Someone contacted David asking about artwork Donald Cammell once produced for a book on King Arthur, which made him look at his brother’s film in a new light.

"If you think about the story of Performance, it has a sort of Arthurian plot about it," he says. "There’s the young maverick knight who arrives at the dark tower of the castle and is seduced by the women, and there’s a certain magic element."

• Performance, opens on 7 May at the Cameo, Edinburgh

May 3rd, 2004 03:44 PM
scratched Is Performance being released on DVD at all?
May 3rd, 2004 03:54 PM
Monkey Woman Only on bootleg yet.