The Harder They Come (1972/Restored Edition/Umbrella
Entertainment/Region Zero/0/PAL Format DVD) + Midnight Movies – From The Margin To The Mainstream (2007/Starz/Anchor
Bay DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B/D Film/Documentary: B
PLEASE NOTE: This DVD edition of The Harder They Come can only be
operated on machines capable of playing back DVDs that can handle Region Zero/0
PAL format software and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella
Entertainment at the website address provided at the end of the review. Midnight
Movies is an NTSC Region 1 U.S. release.
Reggae is
still a major music genre, inspiring Ska, which inspired New Wave and is still
with us in many forms. When the genre
arrived in the late 1960s in and from Jamaica, it had its precedents, but it
was always something special. The
Beatles included its rhythm in Ob-La-Di,
Ob-La-Da, while Linda McCartney reportedly suggested a more explicitly
reggae bridge for the Paul McCartney & Wings James Bond theme song Live & Let Die (1973) five years
later. In about the same time period,
Johnny Nash had a hit the same years as The Beatles with Hold Me Tight, then a megahit in the 1972 classic I Can See Clearly Now. Bob Marley and Peter Tosh were also authentic
major artists who were the genre, but it took a classic film to really get
reggae to explode worldwide and it featured a serious peer of Marley &
Tosh: Jimmy Cliff.
The Harder They Come (1972) is a classic of Third
World Cinema, with its tale of a young country guy in Jamaica (Cliff) going to
the city to see if he can make it big.
It is tough and it is easy to get stabbed in the back, but he believes
if he could cut a bullet (i.e., a record that tops the charts) versus getting
mowed down by one, he could see his dream come true. Writer/director Perry Henzell has made many
films in his homeland, but this is the one that remains his best and also is
one of the earliest and easily best music-driven non-Musicals Hollywood would
bore us with featuring much phonier stories and music in the 1980s.
The story
jokingly samples Hollywood clichés from the classic period (the religious life
and religious music versus secular music bit goes ironically back to the 1927 Jazz Singer, reviewed elsewhere on this
site) and there are great moments of both humor and real free living and life
in Jamaica in between all else, making this as much of an experience as a film,
like all classics. Still, those moments
also include some brutally violent moments, some of which are done with fine
style and contribute to the direction of the narrative.
The
acting can sometimes be like Italian Neo-Realism, yet Cliff proves he can act
as well as he can sing, and wow, can he sing.
The title refers to his hard life and the title song, which his
character records and becomes a big hit as he becomes a criminal under screwed
up circumstances for which he is not totally responsible. No such film had ever come out of Jamaica and
it is not all story or music. Other
great songs include You Can Get It If You
Really Want and Many Rivers To Cross,
all of which were among the tracks that made reggae a permanent world music
force, launched a soundtrack that sold like crazy, made this film a hit and put
Island Records on the map. The songs are
incredible, sights unforgettable and this DVD is the debut of the restored
print of the film after so many prints that made it on home video that did not
look so good. More on that in a minute.
The film
was a bomb upon first release, it became a huge hit on the midnight circuit and
is one of the few films from the 1970s that has the distinction of running for
years as such. That did not hurt the
music one bit either. Turns out it is
among a small, select group of such films and a recent documentary entitled Midnight Movies – From The Margin To The
Mainstream (2007) covers the whole trend and the films that made it up,
including The Harder They Come,
Jodorowsky’s El Topo, Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Lynch’s Eraserhead. Despite some
believing otherwise to the contrary, none of the films were originally intended
for such screenings, but as the counterculture wanted more and so many great
films were coming out at the time, the spillover had to go somewhere and these
films were not coming to local TV anytime soon.
In clips, interviews, archive footage and more, Writer/Director Stuart
Samuels shows us how great all cinema was before cable, satellite and home
video changed the things for good and sometimes for the worse.
Running
86 minutes, the program packs in much information, interviews with the
directors that made the films, plus Roger Ebert, John Waters and other
experts. I also enjoyed the digital
graphics (for a change) that show why all the films became classics of their
own kind, on their own terms and in their own right. It is well worth your time to go out of your
way for.
The
letterboxed 1.66 X 1 image on Harder
is softer in parts than I would have liked, but this is the world debut of the
new print Xenon (an American Black Cinema company who still has their older
edition out on DVD with the older, problematic print they used that is
different from the Criterion print) co-funded the restoration of and for the
most part, it is a big improvement.
However, there are points where the footage seems to color limits, but
that might be the disc, despite this being PAL format. The old 12” Criterion LaserDisc edition
actually has some better color, though Criterion’s now out of print recycle of
their transfer on DVD did not, so it might take Blu-ray to show us how good
this looks. The film was shot in 16mm
and is remarkably good looking when you consider that.
I
compared the new transfer to the same scenes from the older print used for
clips on Midnight that have the
advantage of being anamorphically enhanced, but it’s 1.78 X 1 aspect ratio
features clips that cut well into the 1.66 X 1 frame to the point that it does
not look good and the comparison makes it harder and harder to watch. Except for the opening bus sequence, every
other shot on the PAL DVD is superior to all previous footage for detail,
color, depth and cleanness of the source.
Outdoor shots look good and indoor can be even better, with blue, black,
white and all flesh tones far more naturalistic than ever seen before.
The bus
shots may be cleaner, but as compared to past footage, the colors of the bus
seem a bit off and they should be rich and look as if they were heavily painted
on. A bit of detail is missing here and
there during these opening minutes as compared to the older clips, but the
improvement for the most part will stun fans and those familiar with the
film. It is just going to take a Blu-ray
to really show how great this is.
Advice to
the all companies who issue Blu-rays of the film: pillarbox for 1.66 X 1
framing inside your 1080p HD frame on this film or expect endless criticism and
low sales.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Midnight
is not bad, but composed of mixed quality of all the various clips old and new
as documentaries usually are, but the newer HD is decent (likely 1080i) and
editing is a plus. Both films have Dolby
Digital 2.0 Stereo and they are about the same in quality. Harder
is offered also in its original Dolby 2.0 Mono for purists and a Dolby Digital
5.1 mix that can sound good, but has issues.
Besides the audio being old, the music does not always sound like it is
from the original masters and though music sounds best in the mix, the 5.1
overall is sometimes stretching it versus the 2.0 Stereo mix, which many might prefer. Too bad there is no DTS option.
Extras on
Harder include A Hard Road To Travel
making of featurette almost lasting an hour, slideshow set to Many Rivers To Cross, Music Video for
the title song newly edited out of film footage from the film, on camera
interviews with Cliff, Henzell & Arthur Garson, One & All featurette on
the film’s success and a preview for a new film that is a ‘sequel” despite
other films Henzell’s co-star Carl Bradshaw already made, like Smile Orange, but we do not get the
alternate ending that turned up on some editions. There are no extras on Midnight.
As noted above, you can order the PAL DVD import of The Harder They Come exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
- Nicholas Sheffo
