LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Nicolas Roeg: Donald Cammell
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London-born "Nicolas Roeg" served in the military as a projectionist, and entered the movie industry immediately after World War II as a gofer and apprentice editor. He joined MGM's British studios in 1950, and eventually became a cinematographer in 1959, working on a multitude of films of all types, from second unit work on "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) to primary photography on the rock & roll exploitation films Just for Fun (1963), Every Day's a Holiday (1965), and "The System" (1966). He moved into the director's chair with "Performance" (1970), which he co-directed with Donald Cammell, and made a major impression with the low-keyed, eerily compelling drama "Walkabout" (1971). By the mid-'70s, Roeg was one of England's most respected filmmakers, responsible for the unsettling thriller "Don't Look Now" (1973), and the sci-fi drama The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).
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Born in 1928, Nicolas Roeg became famous from the start as an offbeat director. His first movie,Performance, that he directed with Donald Cammel in 1970, depicts the world of music bands in the seventies, with scenes of violence and sex. The intention is emphasized on screen by Mick Jagger’s participation.
Nicolas Roeg began his film career in the late 1940s, working his way up from tea-maker and clapper-boy to camera operator and then outstanding cinematographer for directors such as Roger Corman, François Truffaut and Richard Lester. His first films as director - Performance (1970 co-directed with Donald Cammell), Walkabout (1971) and Don't Look Now (1973) - immediately established him as one of the most exciting and imaginative film-makers of post-war British cinema.
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As someone for whom Nicolas Roeg was and remains a favourite director, the last few years have been humbling. The most recent film in the Roeg filmography, according to the Internet Movie Database, is The Sound of Claudia Schiffer (2000). Not long before that was the made-for-Turner TV flick, Samson and Delilah (1996) with Liz Hurley as the object of desire, and Full Body Massage (1995), the thinking man's straight-to-video "erotic thriller." Critical attention has shifted (not unfairly) to Donald Cammell, his co-directing partner on Performance (1970), suggesting Roeg's contributions were mainly technical. There is a palpable sense, especially in British film circles, that the trademarks of Roeg's best work - the intricate use of flashback, the unapologetic use of jump cuts and zooms, the far-flung settings, and the obsessive characters - have lost their power to astonish and have shown distinct signs of self-parody.
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This extraordinary 1970 British film marked the directorial debut of cinematographer Nicolas Roeg (working with Donald Cammell). James Fox portrays a London gangster who has to hide away for awhile and ends up staying with a fading rock star (Mick Jagger). The latter recognizes something of his old, daring self in the violent criminal, and after pushing open the boundaries of the hood's experience with psychedelics, the two men begin to intertwine as one. The film is an exciting pool of ideas about real and presumed power, about the mysteries of "performance" as a pressing outward toward an abandonment of identity and embrace of revelation. Beneath it all... is Roeg and Cammell's suspicion that the worlds of these two men-- pop shaman and underworld soldier--are not dissimilar in their self-serving goals.
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Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance : When it was released in America in 1970, Performance was generally trashed in the press. John Simon called it “indescribably sleazy,” and for Richard Schickel it was “the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing.” Warner Brothers, who produced the picture, were unable to decipher its story, unresponsive toward its metaphysical airs, and horrified by the homoerotic violence and nudity that earned it an ‘X’ rating. They distributed it two years after it was completed — but not without extensive cuts.
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