Before The Long Good Friday or even Get Carter, co-directors Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell’s late 60s trippy study of duality and sexual identity was the daddy of British gangster flicks. Hard-nosed henchman Chas (James Fox), on the run from underworld thugs, holes up in the Notting Hill townhouse of reclusive rock star Turner (Mick Jagger) and his two female companions, and finds himself at the centre of all manner of mind games.
The gritty kitchen sink-isms steamroller into the psychodrama and whirlwind of striking pop art visuals of the last hour or so. It’s a clash of cultures which dares to draw parallels between the worlds of the callous hood and the cosseted celebrity. Plainly heavily influenced by 60s European cinema (Bergman, Godard), it’s a much edgier portrait of swinging London than Antonioni’s Blow-Up.
Jagger is mesmerising, perhaps partly due to the fact that he’s playing a character not too far removed from his own personality. Yet despite the presence of one of the world’s biggest rock stars, the movie was shelved until 1970, nearly two years after it was completed, as the distributors felt uncomfortable with its violence and
