Mountain FogRETROSPECT: THE HARDER THEY COME (1972)
April 7th 2009 07:52
Reggae legend Jimmy Cliff Stars as Ivan Martin in The Harder They Come.
It’s 36 years since The Harder They Come bludgeoned its way onto cinema screens in the Caribbean and then throughout the world. Director Perry Henzell and screenwriter Trevor D. Rhone’s power-packed slice-of-life story of a young would-be singer who finds the going tough when he hits the big city of Kingston threw viewers right into the third-world machinations of the Jamaican capital’s grimy corruption. While shot on a tight budget with improvisational camera work and often unpolished acting, it’s these very aspects that give The Harder They Come a rawness and propulsion that boosts the viewer along at break-neck speeds.
The film begins with the arrival in Kingston of Ivan Martin (a beautifully natural performance from reggae star Jimmy Cliff), a country boy who heads for the capital in search of fame and fortune as a singer. But things don’t come easily for the bright-eyed Ivan and as soon as he’s leapt off the bus he’s been swindled out of his belongings, ultimately forcing him to take up labour in the workshop of a local preacher (Basil Keane). The preacher is a draconian sort, and when he discovers that Ivan has been having an affair with one of the female borders, Elsa (Janet Barkley), he forces the young man out of the church. Smarting, Ivan ends up in a knife fight with the preacher’s foreman that subsequently lands him in jail. When, on release, he finally gets to record his tune, ‘The Harder They Come,’ he is brought to heel by monopolist record producer Mr. Hilton (Bobby Charlton) and earns a meagre $20 for his efforts. Frustrated with the cycle of poverty and corruption that stands between him and his dreams of stardom and having to support both himself and Elsa, Ivan turns to his friends, Jose (Carl Bradshaw) and Pedro (Ras Daniel Hartman), who introduce him to the illegal marijuana trade. Ivan takes to the business with gusto and is soon pushing for a bigger slice of the action, upsetting Jose and incurring the wrath of the corrupt police who control the trade. But as the police try to control Ivan his legend grows, propelling him to the status of a folk hero and driving his single to the top of the charts as Hilton cynically cashes in on the publicity.
On its release in Kingston, The Harder They Come was an instant sensation. Outdoor 1500 seat theatres were packed three-fold with screaming fans. It was a director’s wildest fantasy and Henzell was understandably gobsmacked at the reaction, even though in hindsight it’s completely understandable given the local-flavoured and often doco-like drama unfolding onscreen. For local people, The Harder They Come had an undeniable verisimilitude that tapped right into the heart of life on the mean streets of Kingston.
A large part of this appeal had to do with the filmmakers’ clever matching of electric, often hand-held cinematography and rapid-fire editing to a brilliantly visceral story that is very much a homage to the noirish gangster films of the 1930s or the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s – which Ivan watches in the local cinema with his likewise disenfranchised friends – where antiheroes into becoming outlaws by the corruption of the system. Indeed, later in the film, Ivan becomes consumed by his own fantasy and imagines himself as the renegade gunman who ‘can’t die until the final reel,’ as Jose tells him. Contributing to the film immensely is a blazing soundtrack, with major contributions from Cliff himself on the brilliant title track among others and other incisively cut contributions from Toots & the Maytals and the Slickers. A particularly livewire scene where Ivan and a small army of exhilarated children pursue Jose through a shantytown is difficult to imagine without Toots’ feverish ‘Pressure Drop’ in accompaniment.
Ivan tries to talk his way round the embargo placed on his track by Mr. Hilton.
While it wasn’t nearly as immediate, The Harder They Come eventually came to be praised just as highly overseas as it was at home. The film created a particular stir in Europe and the UK, where the stories of the filmmakers’ hard slog of ground level promotion are almost as fascinating as the film itself. When shown at the 1972 Venice Film Festival, the first movie made in Jamaica by Jamicans was very much a sleeper. With no established channels existing for marketing their work, the filmmakers rented a little theatre in Venice proper and tried to lure festival goers over from the Lido. The few who went came away with enthusiastic comments, and within the week The Harder They Come was an underground hit, the strong reviews eventually finding the film a distributor.
It was a similar story in the UK, where the film once again proved a difficult sell initially. The theatre was empty on the first night when it premiered at the ABC cinema in Brixton Hill, prompting Henzell to write up the tales of the manic Jamaican openings on a flyer, which he then handed out in the thousands outside of the Brixton underground. The move turned the tide and the film took off, playing for months on end in some cinemas.
While the appeal of The Harder They Come turned out to be much more universal than first anticipated, it has also proven much more perennial than Henzell or any of his collaborators could have imagined. Besides the natural excitement created by the maverick film-making and naturalistic performances, Ivan’s metamorphosis from aspiring musician to gangster is one often both played out and played up in the rap of today, with stars such as Snoop Dogg and Puff Daddy as infamous for their jostling with the authorities as they are for anything they’ve laid down on record. It all lends a remarkable pertinence to this exceptional film and while The Harder They Come perhaps suffers from a slightly wonky final act, there’s little denying the potency of this crimped postcard from the slums and shantytowns of Jamaica.
Check out the trailer for The Harder They Come - featuring the brilliant song of the title - below:
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Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
I needed subtitles when some of those rastas were speaking!
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
It's great stuff, isn't it? It just has that slight documentary feel to it that really sells it. My bad in the review - I should have mentioned the heavy patois the characters speak in for much of the movie. When I first watched it as a teenager I think I tried to be cool and watch it without subtitles, but that lasted about as long as the first scene.
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
I've got it home, somewhere, and it's a smooth feeling to put it in and watch until Jimmy becomes a criminal...
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
I'm not a massive Marley fan (like him, don't love him), but Toots and the Maytals are soooo good, and used brilliantly in This Is England.
Great film and holds up really well thematically.