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Performance or Blow-up which do you prefer?

posted 18 years ago by xraymantis
17 replies | jump to latest

I refer to this film as that film where Mick Jager eats an ass out! Because in a sex scene in this film that's what happens, however this scene was only shown in a programme about the film, It was cut (or cut down) in the film (well in the U.K. cut of the film anyway).
I remember once seeing an advert on t.v. for that other well known 60s meaningless film Blow-up, and I thought it was Performance but then realised it wasn't. But that got me thinking:
Which do you prefer Performance or Blow-up?
I just can't choose between them, when I say one, I then think that I'm wrong and it's the other!
Let me know what you think

[–] MrJamesBlack 18 years ago

I prefer the film where Mick Jagger eats an ass out. Because it starts off as a 1960s gangster film and degenerates into a right load of camp nonsense. With some french slut, a weird 9 year old, some tart who was married to Keith Richards and Mick Jagger's terrible 'acting.'

Either way both films don't make any bloody sense.

[–] gugggenheim 18 years ago

I think I prefer Blow up. That film feels more real.Although I like Anita's bum.

[–] dreamonforever1 18 years ago

"blow up" for the art. "performance" for the psychedelia.

gregory 041507

[–] anafrancismoreno 18 years ago

I love both, I have studied both at the BFI and It is hard to choose but performance always wins over, it portrays better the scenery of the time.. it's interesting to find people wondering the same thing as I always do..!

[–] persistenceofvision 18 years ago

I'd say Performance, although tragically I've never seen the arse-eating scene. Better music, less pretentious and there's plenty of good jokes.

I read a review of Blow-Up once which said 'Hemmings is a hard actor to care about', which I agree with (in Blow-Up anyway). Whereas I kind of grew to like Chas, and in that scene where he stumbles out into the hall to find all his tooled-up colleagues waiting for him he looks so hopeless it's hard not to feel sorry for him.

[–] theodore_varengo 18 years ago

It's a toss-up. Blow-Up seems a little more artsy-fartsy yet it's a fascinating movie with great photography and a wonderful Swinging London atmosphere. Performance is a little more fun to watch with its gangster violence, loads of sex, and psychedelia, but I don't get the same Swinging London flavor from it (since most of the activity takes place in people's apartments, seedy mob hangouts, and Mick Jagger's house) and it feels a little less "important" somehow. So I think I enjoy "Performance" more, but I recognize "Blow Up" as the more significant film, if that makes sense.

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] buby1987 18 years ago

Come now, gentlemen...

Both films are great. It's hard to choose betwixt 'em. Blow Up was ahead of its time, and heavily influenced The Conversation and Blow Out (among other films). Even Austin Powers takes ideas from Blow Up.

Performance is more avant garde and more outrageous. It is quite flamboyant, and marks a dual directorial debut for Cammell and Roeg. It is rare when two directors with very strong visions can work together and have their sensibilities and separate styles conjoin, but Performance is the work of two unique artists who share one vision (appropriate for a story in which the two principal characters meld together).

The attentive viewer can see how Performance has been strip-mined by subsequent filmmakers. Paul Schrader has always sung its praises. I think Schrader gave Travis Bickle a mohawk in homage to the "no soap on the gentlemen's collar" scene.

James Fox is wonderful as Chas. We can see how his sanity is slowly ebbing away as he goes about his rounds, and then his identity is stripped away in later sequences.

[–] ashleyallinson 18 years ago

How can you compare Blow Up to Performance? Blow Up is nothing

[–] TheSharkThatAteHartCrane 18 years ago

I (re-)watched two films yesterday, The Thin Red Line and Blowup, and both films have the misfortune of unfair comparison - Thin Red Line to that cheesy let-me-tell-you-what-to-think-and-feel Saving Private Ryan and Blowup to Performance.
I won't spew bile with respect to the SPR/TTRL 'debate', but all that Blowup and Performance have in common is their contemporaneousness (sp?), odd structure and a non-obvious narrative (mmm ... maybe they have a lot in common) - a certain avante-gardeness. For the rest they are two completely different films (thematically, psychologically and technically) that happen to be part of a brief period when a number of brilliant films were made in the British Isles.
In any case, it's been said countless times on IMDB, but aesthetic comparison is impossible and technical comparison boring (and I guess also impossible, given the deliberate and sometimes overly-obvious flouting of tradition both films revel in). Which is the better painting: The Mona Lisa or Van Gogh's Sunflowers?
Bit of a poncey and pointless post this, but it's early Sunday and me's got a hangover.

We'll do it doggy-style so we can both watch X Files.

[–] AssetsonFire 17 years ago

They both leave me feeling slightly nauseous, but I choose Blow Up, if only for Vanessa Redgrave's spastic dancing.

How do you like them apples?

[–] wilsonbond_99 17 years ago

Performance, by a mile. Blow-Up was absurdly overpraised by critics who were over-awed by its references to sex, drugs, rock & roll, etc. It hasn't aged well, though, and looks more than ever like a peering outsider's view of that world. Performance was completely of that milieu, and way beyond it at the same time. It was Cammell's masterwork, never to be equaled or repeated.

"Mollymauk doesn't park. He makes lazy circles in the sky."

[–] IanSchultz 17 years ago

The last post took the words out of my mouth, Blow-Up is good but I don't even remember that well but I should re-watch but Performance is bat *beep* crazy and brilliant

All right ramblers..let's get ramblin'
Seth Gecko (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN)

[–] WarpedRecord 16 years ago

So very true. I've watched "Blow-Up" again recently after seeing it several times, and I still don't know what's so great about it other than it's historically important. Maybe that's enough.

"Performance" is half crime thriller, half black comedy, and half commentary on the excesses of rock 'n' roll and crime. And yes, if you do the math, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A better question would be "Performance" or "Persona"? To which I would say: Stop asking these questions! They're both excellent films.

[–] Bree_33 12 years ago

Performance has this quality of not "taking it too seriously". Blow-up lacks sense of humor.

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[–] 12 years ago

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