Adescendant of Charles Cammell of shipbuilders Cammell Laird he was born in Edinburgh’s Outlook Tower on Castlehill (now the Camera Obscura) in 1943. His mother was an aristocrat and his father had a strong interest in the occult writing a book on Aleister Crowley who was once described as ‘the wickedest man in England’. Donald shared his father’s interest in the dark arts for the rest of his life

Cammell is best remembered for his late-1960s cult movie Performance, made in 1968 but not released until 1970, after clashes with Warner Bros the studio that financed it. The studio executives were expecting something colourfully groovy but got drugs, decadence and decay.

Cammell wrote the screenplay and co-directed with Nicholas Roeg, another visionary who went on to make 1976’s The Man Who Fell to Earth with David Bowie. Performance can now be seen on pristine Blu-ray and UHD discs from Criterion. Even in this final state it’s dly mangled. It was said that this was the best film in which Mick Jagger appeared (which doesn’t say much).

Full of literary references (Burroughs, Borges), bloody violence, homoeroticism and druggy sex it is a tough but rewarding watch yet often teeters towards pretentiousness.

There’s a famous scene when a chauffeur has his head shaved by gangsters and the paintwork of his Roller is doused with acid. In another, a pouting Jagger horses around in an op-art-tiled bathroom with naked women.

As a very young man, Cammell was a gifted society portraitist and was prized by the In Crowd. But he saw painting as old hat. Film was the medium with the real message. First a screenwriter on 1968’s star-studded movie Duffy, it was Performance that was to be Donald Cammell’s Citizen Kane.

James Fox played (against type) an East End thug on the run from the filth and the Firm hiding out in a ramshackle basement in Notting Hill – then the stamping ground of notorious slumlord Peter Rachman, a leading character in the 1963 Profumo scandal.

To research the part Fox hung out with London gangsters and, rumour had it, got tips on where to buy his suits and get his hair cut by the ever-dapper Ronnie Kray. Fox’s character finds that living upstairs is his landlord, a faded rockstar (played by Jagger) and his two nubile friends-with-benefits Anita Pallenberg (at the time Keith Richards’ squeeze) and Michèl Breton.

The contrast between the diamond geezer gangster and the hippie pop star is stark. With his blouses, long hair, eyeshadow and lipstick Jagger is ravishing (or like Ziggy Stardust’s auntie depending on your point of view). ‘You’ll look funny when you’re 50,’ says Fox’s character (Jagger is now in his 80s!).

The grimy apartment is like the Biba boutique stockroom ransacked by rats: all candles and flowing ethnic drapes perfect for a debauched lifestyle of sex and magic mushrooms and rock’n’roll. ‘The film was an allegory of libertine Chelsea life in the late-60s… that preserves a whole era under glass,’ wrote Jagger’s muse Marianne Faithful who died in February 2025.

Film writer David Thomson wrote of Performance: ‘It has to be seen – it is very visceral but it’s very heady too – and that element requires patience.’ In his excellent book Supporting Features film critic Damien Love wrote: ‘The film resembles a splintered kaleidoscope, as fragmentary flash-cuts, flashbacks, flash-forwards proliferate and merge’.

The movie had its problems. The studio hated it and demanded changes and it sat on a shelf for two years before it was released. Rumours about the filming were legion.

‘Were the sex scenes involving Anita Pallenberg, Michèle Breton and Jagger “real”? 

Did this on-screen dalliance with Pallenberg, partner to Keith Richards, divide the Stones? Was this the reason for Keith’s descent into heroin addiction?’ wrote Mark Bannerman in his review of the 2019 book Performance: The Making of a Classic (Coattail Publications).

After he finished the film, Fox had a religious conversion of sorts dropping out of acting for several years. Flirting with the occult, late in 1968 Jagger made the song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ the lead track on the Stones’ album Beggar’s Banquet (for which Pallenberg sang back-up). Pallenberg struggled with addiction for most of the rest of her life.

Cammell made an appearance in underground filmmaker (and Aleister Crowley fan) Kenneth Anger’s experimental film Lucifer Rising (1972). Cammell played Osiris, Marianne Faithful was Lilith, and Manson Family acolyte Bobby Beausoliel did the soundtrack. Things were getting dark.

Donald Cammell never really achieved fame. He made a few other films the most interesting was Demon Seed (1977) in which a robot impregnates Julie Christie. He finally took his own life in 1996 when he shot himself in his Hollywood home.

Legend had it that he took 45 minutes to die during which time he insisted his wife hold up a mirror so that he could witness his own death. ■

Info: Performance is on Blu-ray and UHD discs from Criterion

Bluesky: @kenwilson84.bsky.social