Years earlier than individuals around the globe had ever even heard of Bob Marley there was Jimmy Cliff, whose success as a reggae artist laid the foundations for related artists of Caribbean descent to growth. While it’s exhausting to undervalue the affect of his music by itself, Jimmy Cliff’s recognition within the early 70s may be extensively attributed to his efforts in cinema, particularly his 1973 starring automobile: Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, launched within the United States 50 years in the past right this moment.
The movie’s worldwide success is a case by which word-of-mouth, significantly from the non-white viewers of the period, induced it to catapult to stardom on the midnight film circuit the place cult motion pictures thrive. Not solely is it credited for turning Jimmy Cliff right into a star and bringing reggae to the plenty, however its landmark standing additionally pertains to its representational parts, internationalizing the enchantment of Jamaican cinema simply as Bong-Joon Ho’s Parasite did for Korea in 2019.
What Is ‘The Harder They Come’ About?
The Harder They Come follows Jimmy Cliff as Ivanhoe ‘Ivan’ Martin, who, in determined seek for work after the loss of life of his grandmother, data an absolute smasher of successful tune solely to be swindled out of his royalties by corrupt recording managers, in the end forcing him into a lifetime of crime. It’s Sergio Corbucci’s Django meets Straight Outta Compton, two references that maintain vital that means with regard to each the movie’s adopted model (a Jamaican spaghetti western) and the enduring relevance of its themes (the exploitation of recording artists and hyperlink between crime and music).
For Black audiences, the movie was a representational milestone, shot on location and spoken solely in Jamaican Patois, making it one of many few English language movies that required subtitles within the United States because of the thickness of the accents. The outcome was a sense of authenticity that allowed the movie to behave as a window into one other tradition, with some of the euphoric soundtracks besides.
‘The Harder They Come’s Soundtrack Is Iconic
Importantly, whereas Jimmy Cliff is undoubtedly the movie’s star, his music is way from the one one promoted within the movie’s genre-defining soundtrack. While it wasn’t till 1975 that Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” topped charts and launched him to tremendous stardom, Cliff and Henzell’s number of tracks for his or her ground-breaking movie moreover featured the likes of the Melodians (“Rivers of Babylon”), Desmond Dekker (“007 (Shanty Town)”) and Toots & the Maytals (“Pressure Drop”), amongst others, helping within the elevated recognition of quite a lot of reggae legends exterior of Jamaica. This collective catalog acted as a who’s who of Jamaican legends on the time, ensuing within the album’s preservation by the Library of Congress and its placement amongst Rolling Stone journal’s record of the 500 biggest albums of all time.
‘The Harder They Come’ Strips Away Spectacle, Highlighting the Music
While there was no telling the numerous extent to which the soundtrack turned embedded into common tradition, it’s protected to say that Henzell knew easy methods to leverage the music depicted. This is clear within the movie’s most iconic scene, the place Jimmy Cliff data everything of “The Harder They Come” (practically 4 minutes) with no interruptions and no further visible stimulus. Just one man in a recording studio, laying down a banging observe, skanking forwards and backwards with a burning cigarette in his hand.
This lack of spectacle and highlight on the music itself elevated the movie from a low-budget neo-Western to a cultural staple, the affect of which may nonetheless be felt right this moment. The influential energy of cinema is concurrently addressed throughout the movie itself, when early on Ivan goes to see Sergio Corbucci’s Django. Cutting back-and-forth between a climactic shootout in Django to the viewers’s massively entertained expressions permits viewers to see the enduring affect that cinema has on the impressionable, forming a lot of the character work that pushes Ivan into a lifetime of crime after these in energy repeatedly attempt to convey him down.
‘The Harder They Come’ Shows Music as Rebellion
The cinema scene in The Harder They Come additionally serves for instance the significance of illustration. It’s exhausting to neglect Ice Cube’s iconic line, uttered by his son in Straight Outta Compton: “Our art is a reflection of our reality,” functioning as a staunch justification for the violent themes so closely obvious within the music of rappers and reggae artists alike.
In The Harder They Come, Ivan is a vocal dreamer, rebelling towards the ability of prayer all through the movie that insists that heavenly rewards await all believers within the afterlife. One must look no additional than the opening lyrics of the title observe: “Well they tell me of a pie up in the sky, waiting for me when I die. But between the day you’re born and when you die, they never seem to hear even your cry.” It’s not simply catchy, it’s anthemic, urging audiences to withstand struggling and demand salvation within the life that they’re residing, slightly than the one which’s promised.
Through its ground-breaking soundtrack, the movie’s storyline championed themes upheld by America’s rampant counterculture motion (sticking it to the person) in addition to the hip-hop motion rising in the identical period, affirming music as a technique to free one’s self from a lifetime of poverty. Apparent within the rise of hip-hop in the identical decade, it wasn’t simply the movie’s music that struck a chord within the United States, however its story’s themes as properly.
Spoilers forward however, sticking true to the political statements made all through the movie, despite conjuring an infectious hit tune, issues don’t go properly for Ivan for the rest of the runtime. Wherever he goes, betrayal and exploitation all the time comply with, and after receiving a mere $20 for his report, he’s shortly swindled out of any royalties by his corrupt producer and compelled into a gentle lifetime of crime within the type of marijuana promoting. In a shocking remaining shootout that mirrors the Django scene, Ivan, uninterested in operating, takes arms up towards the cops on his tail. He is aware of it’s futile however fights anyway, upon which it meta-textually cuts back-and-forth to a Jamaican viewers in a cinema cheering him on.
After his premature loss of life, a girl’s torso shakes in rhythm to Ivan’s hit tune because the credit roll, as if to recommend that via Ivan’s appearances in a number of types of media, a brand new legend is born. Essentially nonetheless, not like in Django, this time the legend is Jamaican. In the 70s, there was in all probability no higher option to stick it to the person than to construct an icon that stood for every little thing the person wasn’t, proving that The Harder They Come didn’t simply change into successful for the soundtrack, however vice versa as properly.