Donald CAMMELL

Few careers in British cinema have promised so much but ended in such tragic disappointment as that of Donald Cammell. Whether through his own intransigence or the shortsightedness of an industry which failed to appreciate his unusual gifts, Cammell's reputation still rests largely on the achievements of just one remarkable film, Performance (1970). Cammell was born in Edinburgh, on 17 January 1934, the son of Charles Richard Cammell, heir to a shipbuilding fortune which had been lost in the stock market crash of the 1930s. Prodigiously gifted as a painter, he trained at the Royal Academy and then established himself as a successful portrait painter to fashionable London society in the 1950s. He entered the film industry as a scriptwriter with two unremarkable Swinging London caper films, The Touchables (1968) and Duffy (1968), both of which deal with the intersection between gangsters and hippiedom, a theme that was to be central to Performance.

Cammell's script for Performance drew on his experience of the Chelsea set, a world where gangsters partied alongside pop stars and the aristocracy. The film's experienced cinematographer, Nicolas ROEG, was asked to co-direct with Cammel to reassure its American backers, Warner Brothers. Its story of the encounter between a jaded rock star (Mick Jagger) and a brutal gangster (James Fox) provides the framework for a dazzling examination of the nature of identity, as the repressed Fox gradually unravels under the influence of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.