9. Performance (1970)
Warner Bros.
What's It All About? An east-London gangster (James Fox) goes on the run from his crime-lord boss, hiding out in the Chelsea home of a reclusive, troubled rock star (Mick Jagger). It soon becomes apparent, however, that the film is about something far more unsettling, as the imagery grows increasingly weirder, darker and more psychologically disturbing than in any simple crime movie; identities merge, as the rock star appears to become the gangster - and the gangster starts experimenting with cross-dressing. The sexual content, considered graphic at the time, is by modern standards hardly explicit, but the undercurrent of paranoia, manifest in notions of gender identity, are as provocative and challenging today as they were during the sexual revolution. At the time many critics found Performance hard to watch, for all manner of reasons. It is certainly not for the fragile minded.
What's The Question Then? Are you a boy or a girl?
Does It Answer It? The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness, says Mick Jagger's Turner. Is that answer enough for you?