‘Performance’

Sir, – Alan Jenkins says in his article (December 21 & 28, 2018) that the film Performance (1968), with James Fox and Mick Jagger, “ is the moment when the Sixties went a bit dark”. I think that filmically it began to get dark at least five years earlier than this, with The Servant, the film directed by the wonderful Joseph Losey. James Fox starred in this film also, playing very much to type. His co-star Dirk Bogarde played the eponymous servant who took over – and destroyed – his employer’s life. For Bogarde it was a role very much against type in what many consider to be his first piece of “real” acting and arguably the start of his second acting career. But the later Performance was indeed dark enough to trouble Fox so greatly that he gave up acting and became an evangelist for an obscure Christian sect.

F. W. NUNNELEY
Beckley, East Sussex.