Director: Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg
Screenplay: Donald Cammell
Starring: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michele Breton
Running Time: 105 minutes
Genre: Crime, drama, fantasy
This film was produced in 1968 but not released until 1970. In London, Chas Devlin (Fox) is a brutal gangland enforcer, who genuinely enjoys his work. When he disobeys direct orders from his boss and kills a rival for personal, rather than business reasons, Devlin becomes targeted by his own gang. He decides to hide out in the vast mansion of reclusive rock star, Turner (Jagger), who lives with Pherber (Pallenberg) and Lucy (Breton). In Turner's surreal, erotic, decadent world of drugs, sex and mysticism, Devlin finds the boundaries of reality and fantasy collapsing.
This is a film that, if you see it once, you will never forget it. It's very much a film of two halves. The first half is, in terms of plot, a great if conventional gangster film (in terms of style and technique it is a million miles away from an ordinary gangster film), and in the second it becomes a surreal fantasy of sex, drugs and identity. It utilises a fragmented, stream of conscience style, using almost every cinematic trick in the book. James Fox is perfect as Chas Devlin, someone who is, in British criminal slang, a "performer" (a gangster with a special talent for violence and intimidation), he frequently tells people "I know who I am", he lives in a pristine apartment, and is always immaculately groomed and dressed in sharp suits, and is always in control. Mick Jagger's Turner is another type of performer, a rock star who has retired because, as he says "I lost my demon". Devlin, a man who needs to be in control, suddenly finds himself, in Turner's house, in a situation where he has no control, where all the old rules just don't apply. Very much a product of it's time, and full of references to Jorge Luis Borges and William Burroughs, this is still genuinely shocking and disturbing.
No comments:
Post a Comment