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BFI Film Classics
PERFORMANCE.
In this book, having conducted extensive interviews with surviving participants, Colin MacCabe presents the definitive history of the making of Performance, as well as a new interpretation of its artistry.
- GenresFilmNonfiction
Paperback
First published August 26, 1998
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About the author
Colin MacCabe
41 books12 followersColin MacCabe is an English academic, writer and film producer. He has published books on a variety of subjects, including Jean Luc Godard, James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, and has produced many films, among them Young Soul Rebels, Seasons in Quincy, and Caravaggio. He is currently distinguished professor of English and film at the University of Pittsburgh.
MacCabe became involved in Screen, a journal of film theory published by SEFT (Society for Education in Film and Television) becoming a member of its board in 1973–78 and contributing essays such as "Realism and Cinema: Notes on Some Brechtian Theses" (1974). This was a period that critic Robin Wood described as the "felt moment of Screen" – the time when critical theories emanating from Paris in the late 1960s began to intervene in Anglophone film culture. By releasing the energy and intellectual debate associated with a major paradigm shift, Screen posed a "formidable and sustained challenge to traditional aesthetics" and academia.
MacCabe came to public prominence in 1981 when he was denied tenure at Cambridge University as a consequence of his position at the centre of a much publicised dispute within the faculty of English concerning the teaching of structuralism. His account of events was published three decades later in "A Tale of Two Theories".
After leaving Cambridge he took up a professorship of English at the University of Strathclyde (1981–85), where he was Head of Department and introduced graduate programmes, developing it as a centre for literary linguistics. After over a decade, in which he combined his positions at the British Film Institute with a one-semester appointment at the University of Pittsburgh, he took up a fractional professorship at the University of Exeter (1998–2006), and then at Birkbeck, University of London (1992–2006). He is currently visiting Professor of English at University College, London and at the Birkbeck Institute. In 2011 he taught for a semester in the Department of Cultural Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad. He was a visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford in the Michaelmas term of 2014. Since 1986 he has remained a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
MacCabe became involved in Screen, a journal of film theory published by SEFT (Society for Education in Film and Television) becoming a member of its board in 1973–78 and contributing essays such as "Realism and Cinema: Notes on Some Brechtian Theses" (1974). This was a period that critic Robin Wood described as the "felt moment of Screen" – the time when critical theories emanating from Paris in the late 1960s began to intervene in Anglophone film culture. By releasing the energy and intellectual debate associated with a major paradigm shift, Screen posed a "formidable and sustained challenge to traditional aesthetics" and academia.
MacCabe came to public prominence in 1981 when he was denied tenure at Cambridge University as a consequence of his position at the centre of a much publicised dispute within the faculty of English concerning the teaching of structuralism. His account of events was published three decades later in "A Tale of Two Theories".
After leaving Cambridge he took up a professorship of English at the University of Strathclyde (1981–85), where he was Head of Department and introduced graduate programmes, developing it as a centre for literary linguistics. After over a decade, in which he combined his positions at the British Film Institute with a one-semester appointment at the University of Pittsburgh, he took up a fractional professorship at the University of Exeter (1998–2006), and then at Birkbeck, University of London (1992–2006). He is currently visiting Professor of English at University College, London and at the Birkbeck Institute. In 2011 he taught for a semester in the Department of Cultural Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad. He was a visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford in the Michaelmas term of 2014. Since 1986 he has remained a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 19, 2022
There are only a small number of films that have so entranced me that I've felt compelled to seek out written commentary after viewing. Inevitably, these have been the sort of films that defy easy interpretation, and in scanning my bookshelves, it's a small grouping:
1) Everything by Andrei Tarkovsky, with particular emphasis on Andrei Rublev
2) Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour and L'Année dernière à Marienbad
3) Peter Greenaway's Drowning by Numbers.
And now add to the list Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's Performance. The latter is such an extraordinary exploration of identity, sexuality, and violence that I had no choice to but to learn more about its creation, and Colin MacCabe's brief study is the perfect place to start. MacCabe provides an overview of the complicated genesis of Performance, as well as its lasting impact, which has been more significant in the UK than here in the US. MacCabe's musings on the film's longevity are worth quoting in brief:
There are no concrete answers on the full meaning and impact of Performance, but Colin MacCabe does a wonderful job of articulating how this amazing production came to be, and why it continues to reward repeated viewings so richly.
1) Everything by Andrei Tarkovsky, with particular emphasis on Andrei Rublev
2) Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour and L'Année dernière à Marienbad
3) Peter Greenaway's Drowning by Numbers.
And now add to the list Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's Performance. The latter is such an extraordinary exploration of identity, sexuality, and violence that I had no choice to but to learn more about its creation, and Colin MacCabe's brief study is the perfect place to start. MacCabe provides an overview of the complicated genesis of Performance, as well as its lasting impact, which has been more significant in the UK than here in the US. MacCabe's musings on the film's longevity are worth quoting in brief:
Performance's future is not simply an academic judgment on a text, it will be tied to the whole legacy of a generation which bought its counter-culture from record stores, drug dealers and chemists; exchanges for which the full reckoning has yet to be calculated.
There are no concrete answers on the full meaning and impact of Performance, but Colin MacCabe does a wonderful job of articulating how this amazing production came to be, and why it continues to reward repeated viewings so richly.
January 29, 2008
If not THE, at the very least one of the most interesting films from the late 1960's. When Mick was at the most "Mick Jagger" and with the great and underrated James Fox - made the most altimate film of its period. Drugs, British criminals, rock n' roll, decadence, bi-sexual, tri-sexual, everything-sexual trip that ends in total death and I guess some form of wisedom. Donald Cammell made this masterpiece that is dense with imagery as well as literary illustions of all sorts. The ultimate 'trip' film of all 'trip' films. And a great soundtrack as well.
Colin MacCabe steps into the madhouse to make some sense to all of this - and he does! But the fun part is to discover all of this by yourself - if possible. Nevertheless this is a very good book, and MacCable is a really good film essayist. Very enjoyable ride to the 60's underground and very much the dark side of the groovy London 60's.
Colin MacCabe steps into the madhouse to make some sense to all of this - and he does! But the fun part is to discover all of this by yourself - if possible. Nevertheless this is a very good book, and MacCable is a really good film essayist. Very enjoyable ride to the 60's underground and very much the dark side of the groovy London 60's.
April 3, 2011
Here’s the scoop on the vision, work, and just plain dumb luck behind
Performance
, a riveting 1970 cult flick best known as Mick Jagger’s acting debut. Many interesting tidbits here: of the leads, only James Fox was really an actor. Johnny Shannon, who plays mob boss Harry Flowers, was a real London East End hood hired initially as an accent coach. Jagger, despite his star power and ground-breaking, pre-music-video performance of Memo from Turner in this film, played a peripheral role in production.
Performance is not, and was never intended by its makers to be, a Jagger vehicle. What is it, then? MacCabe, a Cambridge-educated English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, nudges ahead the slowly developing case for Performance as a Godard-like canvas rich in interpretational possibilities: sexual, psychological, political, magical. More of this, please. A throwaway from Footnote 25 alone is worth its own full-blown treatment: “ Performance as the first ‘queer’ film.”
Performance is not, and was never intended by its makers to be, a Jagger vehicle. What is it, then? MacCabe, a Cambridge-educated English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, nudges ahead the slowly developing case for Performance as a Godard-like canvas rich in interpretational possibilities: sexual, psychological, political, magical. More of this, please. A throwaway from Footnote 25 alone is worth its own full-blown treatment: “ Performance as the first ‘queer’ film.”
January 22, 2024
Very good on the film's context and production, but MacCabe lost me towards the end with sentences like "Fredric Jameson reinvented the Marxist hermeneutic in his Political Unconscious by seeking the fundamental social level of any text in its unconscious fantasmatic projections of social relations". He also too frequently states as fact that Performance is the greatest film ever made for one reason or another, which is instantly alienating if you just happen to think it's pretty good.
October 1, 2023
the most extraordinary fact about this extraordinary movie. A Hollywood studio committed a serious budget to a film in which almost all the principals, both cast and crew, were absolute beginners. More than that, Warner Bros allowed them to shoot entirely on location with no representative of the studio to ensure that they would produce an acceptable movie
March 9, 2023
A short interesting book on a marvellous film. Superb on the murderous cockney vernacular of Johnny Shannon, the design of the film and sexual.identity.
Marred by careless mistakes: John Bandon, Krays from Hoxton and Lambeth is in the East End.
Marred by careless mistakes: John Bandon, Krays from Hoxton and Lambeth is in the East End.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews