Performance 1970

The grimy criminal underworld and hedonistic rock-and-roll counterculture of late-1960s London collide in this mind-scrambling, kaleidoscopic freak-out. On the run from his vengeful boss, a ruthless gangster (James Fox) hides out in the Notting Hill home of a reclusive rock star (Mick Jagger) and his companions (Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton), who open the doors of his perception as the lines between reality and fantasy, male and female, persona and self, dissolve in a hallucinogenic haze. Built around Jagger’s most magnetic narrative-film performance, this visionary collaboration between Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg is a daringly transgressive, endlessly influential journey to the dark side of bohemia.