Paul Schrader on ‘Performance’

Performance (Directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg)

‘The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness’. 

– Performance (1970)

Performance was a collaboration by two filmmakers – writer and painter Donald Cammell (who worked with the actors from his original script and supervised the film’s editing) and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg (responsible for the camerawork and film’s hallucinatory imagery). Described at the time as ‘the worlds most expensive home movie,’ Performance has become over the years one of the most influential and revered ‘cult’ films ever made. 

Performance is a complex film to absorb initially, rooted as is it in the specific milieu of late 1960’s London. The criminal sub-culture of East End gangsterism, represented by the violence of the Kray Twins, comes into contact, and morphs into, the decadent bohemianism of The Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger, who plays the role of ‘Turner’ with an affected narcissism based substantially on fellow Stone, Brian Jones.

In Performance, London gangster Chas (James Fox) specialises in extortion, a ‘performer’ whose ‘role’ is to use threats and violence to enforce payment. Self-consciously masculine, the unemotional and brutal Chas falls out of favour with his boss after he kills another gangster in defiance of orders and is then compelled to go on the run. He chooses to hide out in an unfamiliar environment, the Notting Hill residence of reclusive rock star Turner and his two girlfriends Pherber and Lucy (Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton). Although Chas’s pretence to be an unemployed juggler convinces no-one, Turner is sufficiently intrigued and broke enough to allow him to stay.

Jagger’s musician Turner has run out of inspiration and retreated into the self-contained world of his house to lead a drug-fuelled existence that initially fills Chas with contempt. Soon Turner and Pherber start to play a series of mind games on Chas, taking advantage of his dependent status and using drugs to gradually undermine his aggressive persona.

Explicitly intellectual, underscored with violence and a hallucinogenic intensity, Performance’s ambitious esthetic manages to reference Kenneth Anger, Antonin Artaud and Jorge Luis Borges, while Cammell, a former artist, also relies on a Francis Bacon painting for inspiration in connecting the two worlds of the film.

When the gangsters finally arrive to take the disorientated Chas away to his death, Chas, now wearing a long wig, makes his way to Turner and murders him. There is an implied complicity between the two men in this act, as if Turner had been preparing for Chas to kill him all along. Although it is evidently Chas that the gangsters bundle into a car immediately afterwards, it is Jagger/Turner’s face that is visible at the car window as it drives away. The two men have become united: the ‘masculine’ Chas and ‘feminine’ Turner now combined into one through the ritual of death.

Donald Cammell stated that his intention in making Performance was to make a ‘transcendent’ film in which death becomes not the end of life but the beginning of an alternative existence – a notion that owes much to Jean Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un poète (Blood of a Poet, 1930), a film that Cammell was fascinated by, and in which the poet-martyr ultimately achieves immortality, paradoxically, through death. 

After completion, it took nearly two years for Warner Bros to distribute Performance in the United States, where, after its release, it gradually assumed cult status. A critical re-appraisal also took place over the decades in contrast to the film’s initially hostile reception. 

When Performance was eventually released on DVD in the United States, screenwriter and director Paul Schrader wrote the following piece in which he expresses his appreciation of Cammell and Roeg’s film and positions their achievement as cinema’s version of Coleridge’s opium-fuelled Kubla Khan:

Ever since the inception of movies, critics and journalists have tried to overlay its creators with the Romantic myth of creativity. If motion pictures were to be ‘art’ in the 19th-century sense, its creators must be ‘artists’ in the Romantic mode: pawns of their muse-inspired, individualistic, unconventional, and irresponsible. But, of course, then as now, this is all so much propaganda. Second only to architecture, movies are the most practical of the arts. Films are made in a disciplined manner by practical people whose creativity is more the product of sober calculation than capricious inspiration, be the film in question a classic or a programmer.

A number of films have been made in the Romantic context – personal visions responsive to instant inspiration – but, for the most part, they were unfinished, unreleased, or unwatched. The very nature of filmmaking – its financing, distribution, the physical nature of production, the conventions of storytelling, preset audience expectations, media packaging – mitigates against the success of such films. There’s no cinematic equivalent of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan.

The closest thing we have to the Great Exception is Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance, now finally, after much delay, available on DVD. This was a film made in an unusual time under unusual circumstances, and, looking back at it now, it’s as inspired, unconventional, individualistic, and irresponsible as it was 35 years ago. It’s as if a wormhole opened in the common-sense history of film – and Performance came through.

Performance is a great film, a masterpiece, which adheres to few of the rules that define greatness. It doesn’t come out of a film tradition, it’s not the work of a great filmmaker, it doesn’t define a film style. If anything, it seems sui generis, a genuine film serendipity, the product of conflicting creative forces momentarily (perhaps magically) aligned and in sync: writer/director Donald Cammell, director/cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, producer Sandy Lieberson, technical advisor David Litvinoff, actors Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and James Fox, editor Frank Mazzola, composer Jack Nitzsche.

The insecurity of the studio system, the aura of swinging London, the social upheaval of the moment (the film was greenlit in the spring of 1968), London’s distance from Los Angeles, and Jagger’s star power combined to give Cammell and Roeg unprecedented financial and creative freedom. During shooting, the film veered ‘off book.’ Cammell and Roeg would confer at the end of each day, discuss what had happened from their separate perspectives (Cammell story and dialogue, Roeg images), and plot what should happen the next day. Everything was up for grabs: every idea, every image, no matter how outré or unexpected. Furniture was moved about between the master and the coverage, 16mm camerawork replaced 35mm in certain shots, actors were encouraged to ‘play out’ their actual relationships. Critics have been arguing for 30 years whether Performance is a Cammell film or a Roeg film or a Cammell/Roeg film – or whether, in fact, it’s a Frank Mazzola film since so much of the structure was created in the editing. Even the film’s creators were uncertain about who did what.

However it came about, the result is unique in film history: a masterpiece made from madness. Antonin Artaud was a crucial figure in Cammell’s thinking and informs Performance’s famous line: ‘The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness.’ The madness that infected Cammell and Roeg, their belief in magic, their notions of visual images as language, their Blakean conviction that the road to excess – in sex, violence, drugs, you name it – leads to the palace of wisdom, cohered in a way that defies explanation.

Warner Brothers, offended by the X-rated result (Warner Bros. President Ted Ashley was described as ‘appalled’), dumped the film, releasing it in a handful of theaters with minimal publicity. I saw it opening night in Westwood Village where I lived; I walked home in a daze, so astonished by what I’d seen that I went back the next afternoon to see it again. I put it on the cover of Cinema, the film magazine I edited, and have watched it every year or so ever since, never failing to be astonished anew. When others ask me why I admire the film so, I find myself uncharacteristically at a loss for words. My best answer is the greatest compliment one can give a film: I say, simply, ‘It’s the real thing.’

– ‘Paul Schrader on Performance’. Film Comment – March/April 2007.

Elia Kazan: From Theatre to Film

A Streetcar Named Desire (Directed by Elia Kazan)

With his films and stage works in the 1940s and 1950s, Elia Kazan established himself as a leading proponent of psychological realism. His works are both a reflection of societal struggle and personal anguish. 

Kazan was born in 1909 in Istanbul into an Anatolian Greek family. Kazan's family emigrated to the United States when he was four years old, and he grew up in New York City's slums and suburbs. He was a solitary youngster who read incessantly. Determined not to follow in his father's business, the young Kazan studied English literature at Williams College from 1926 to 1930. This is where he first gained an interest in theatre. 

Kazan condidered a career in cinema and determined that more theatrical training would assist him in accomplishing that aim. He was admitted to Yale's School of Drama despite his lack of practical experience. Between 1930 and 1932, Kazan engaged himself in all facets of theatre creation. He discovered that he shared an interest in social drama and the formation of a left-wing alternative to Broadway theatre. Kazan left graduate school before finishing his degree to work as an apprentice with the Group Theatre, a subsidiary of the Theatre Guild. 

Cheryl Crawford, Lee Strasberg, and Harold Clurman developed the Group Theatre, modelled after Stanislavski's renowned Moscow Art Theatre. The company's works sought to balance social awareness with aesthetic brilliance. Kazan served in a number of  capacitirs for the ensemble, including press agent, stage manager, and performer, earning himself the nickname “Gadge”, short for gadget. In 1934, he helped recruit new writers, including Clifford Odets, whose play Waiting for Lefty, was a great success and in which Kazan also appeared. 

Kazan remained a member of the company until 1941, performing in Odets' Golden Boy and other productions. Kazan started focusing exclusively on directing and throughout the decade's first few years, he directed a number of plays, most notably Thorton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, starring Tallulah Bankhead, for which Kazan received the 1942 New York Drama Critics' Award for Best Director. By 1945, Kazan had been approached to direct both on Broadway and in Hollywood. He proceeded to have success in both areas, with the film A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and the play All My Sons, which was written by an unknown young writer called Arthur Miller.

His first full-length feature was a film adaptation of Betty Smith's best-selling novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." Though it did not fare well at the box office, the film received positive reviews for its realism and performances. 

Two years later, Kazan's passion for social concerns led him to create a landmark picture on the plague of anti-Semitism, "Gentleman's Agreement," about a journalist assigned to pose as a Jew in order to see prejudice firsthand. The film earned eight Academy Award nominations and took home three, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kazan. 

Kazan was now in demand and flourishing on both the stage and screen: from 1947 to 1951 he directed the original productions of two enormously influential plays: Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Arthur Miller's "Death Of A Salesman," as well as directing the film adaptation of "Streetcar," as well as "Pinky" (1949), another taboo-busting film about racism, as well as "Panic In The Streets" (1950). 

Kazan formed the Actors' Studio in 1947 with Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis as a kind of resurrection of the Group Theatre, with an emphasis on actor instruction rather than production. Kazan returned to theatre with Miller's Death of a Salesman, starring Lee J. Cobb. The play was a spectacular success, running for more than 700 performances and winning several prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize. 

Then, in 1952, shortly after filming "Viva Zapata" with actor Marlon Brando (whom Kazan had propelled to popularity in the stage and screen adaptations of "Streetcar"), McCarthyism finally caught up with him, and Kazan made a fateful decision. After first refusing to identify names with HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee), he eventually agreed to fully participate. Kazan became a pariah overnight in the eyes of many of his friends and acquaintances. Kazan never expressed regret publically  for his conduct, thinking Communism to be a danger to American values. This only served to intensify anger against him. 

Ironically, it was at this point in his life that he became most inspired as an artist. He often reflected on how the films he created after the HUAC experience were his most powerful — and personal — works. His creativity was motivated by a deep-seated sense of self-justification. 

His undisputed masterwork is 1954's "On The Waterfront," which was scripted by Budd Schulberg and starred Brando in his third and last cinematic collaboration with Kazan. Terry Malloy is played by Brando, a retired prizefighter who works for his brother Charlie (Rod Steiger). Charlie is second-in-command to mobster Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), who commands the waterfront via intimidation and brutality. Terry's journey from cynical, indifferent punk to heroic crusader, who ends up reporting on - and finally dismantling - the Friendly machine is chronicled in the film. 

"Waterfront" was Kazan's response to those who criticised his HUAC performance: the unmistakable message is that speaking up against evil is a worthy endeavour. The storyline and performance are stunning, while Boris Kaufman's austere photography and Leonard Bernstein's evocative soundtrack complement the action. The film received 12 Academy Award nominations and won eight, including Best Picture, Actor (Brando), Actress (Eva Marie Saint), Writing, Cinematography, and Editing, as well as another Best Director award for Kazan. 

Kazan next took a risk on an unknown young actor called James Dean to adapt John Steinbeck's book "East of Eden" for the big screen. Kazan would film in widescreen and in vibrant, rich colour this time. The narrative, set in California in 1917, is a modern retelling of the Cain and Abel legend. This success earned both Kazan and Dean Academy Award nominations. 

Kazan next founded his own film company and produced Baby Doll (1956), A Face in the Crowd (1957), and several additional films, all of which failed to find a mainstream audience. In 1957, Kazan returned to the stage, directing William Inge's Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Archibald MacLeish's J. B., and Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. 

Kazan temporarily reconciled with Arthur Miller in 1963, directing the latter's play After the Fall. While the play was a triumph, Kazan's second production of The Changeling was a failure, prompting his resignation. Kazan then chose to film America, America, a fictitious account of his family's relocation to the United States. His subsequent picture, The Arrangement, was semi-autobiographical and a commercial flop. 

Kazan subsequently switched to writing novels and directed one more picture, 1976's The Last Tycoon. Elia Kazan: a Life, his 1988 autobiography, was a colourful and frank account of the people and works that shaped a remarkable life.

In the following extract from an interview with Cahiers du Cinema in 1966, the great Greek-American director Elia Kazan discusses his transition from theatre to film, and how this influenced his conception of character and artistic realism.

CAHIERS: Shall we begin with the actors? It seems that, little by little, you have guided them from exteriorization toward a certain interiorization.

ELIA KAZAN: I believe that that is true. In the films that I was making twenty years ago, I had, I chose, more flamboyant actors. They were the engines of the film, and the film was the vehicle of their expression; it was always a question of expressing, of exteriorizing what there was ‘in’ them, and the free course that I left to this flamboyance made me tend sometimes almost toward opera. But, little by little, I lost interest in this expression as such, and in fact I almost turned against it. I began, too, to restrain my actors, in proportion as I saw things in a truer, calmer fashion.

At the same time, I became more and more interested in what happened to them, to the actors, human beings, characters—in the way in which they reflected or reinforced something, be it unconsciously, in the way in which they let something grow in them, come out from them. Now, ten or fifteen years afterward, I see the gap that separates me from the first manner, when my actors were moved by the most violent feeling of life, which they rendered directly and unconsciously. Now I no longer ‘feel’ people through an acting technique. Life is not like that. People ordinarily do not know or realize the why and the how of their beings, whence they originate and whither they lead them. In any case, very few people know exactly what they want, and there are fewer still who can go straight to what they want. That is why I direct my youngsters in a more supple, more complex way. I abandon myself more to imprecision, to the nebulous, and I accept more readily the ways of contradiction. I believe that that is the only way to approach the truth.

A Streetcar Named Desire (Directed by Elia Kazan)

CAHIERS: Your films themselves are made more and more on the complexity and contradictions of life.

ELIA KAZAN: At the start, my films were always written by scenarists, sometimes theatre men [Tennessee Williams, William Inge]. Even then I worked on them myself, but little by little I collaborated more and finally I began to write my stories myself. I was present at the birth of the film, instead of being, as before, the conductor of cadences and solos. In A Streetcar Named Desire, there are entire scenes that I would do differently today. I would have them happen much more calmly, unconsciously, and that would take much more time as well. I still think that dramaturgy is essential in theatre, but one must rethink the thing completely when one approaches the screen. That too is why, as I grew older, I felt more and more acutely the difference between theatre and film. and, little by little, I lost interest in the theatre.

CAHIERS: But the fact is that you originally acquired much from the theatre. Perhaps something of it still remains today in your films?

ELIA KAZAN: I agree absolutely. I took something from the theatre and that something is still there. But, regarding that, let me be more specific about some points. The essence of the Stanislavsky method, and the fundamental interest that it had for us, in the way in which we learned it as students and used it later, dwelt in the action. That is to say, when someone felt, experienced something, our feeling—and our theory—was that this emotion would never become ‘of’ the theatre, unless it were expressed as a need, a hunger. And it is of this need, of this hunger, that such-and-such a precise action sprang incarnated as expression of this hunger. The play became a series of progressions, each of which consisted of the fact that a person did a certain thing that responded to a certain want. We stressed the word ‘want’. and we did our best to emerge on the word ‘do’. In short: To do. To want. To do.

Wild River (Directed by Elia Kazan)

We sought to attain the infinitive: To conquer, to love ... infinitives emerging on ‘To want’ and ‘To do.’ The result was that our performances in the theatre, especially in the form in which I expressed myself at the start, were extremely violent, violent and amusing. But today, when I observe life, I see it takes much less direct paths, circuitous paths, subtle and subterranean. Moreover, when the actor is aware of his aim—because the director has pointed it out to him or he has analyzed it himself—he cannot but distance himself from life to the extent to which, in life, people are uncertain ultimately as to what they want. They oscillate, wander, drift, in relation to their aim—or they change their aim. In short, they want this, then that, but... but that is life, and it is there that the poetry of life dwells, in these contradictions, these sudden deflections, these aspirations that spring up and disconcert. In short, while I once had a unilinear approach to life, I now interest myself more and more in the complexity of things.

– Interview with Elia Kazan. By Michel Delahaye 1966. From Cahiers du Cinema in English. March 1967.