Rewind, film: 'The Harder They Come', directed by Perry Henzell
Making its debut at the 1972 Venice Film Festival, one year before the release of The Wailers' breakthrough reggae album Catch a Fire, The Harder They Come has been called the first feature-length film made in Jamaica by Jamaicans. It is certainly one of the first homegrown movies to achieve international acclaim.
Making its debut at the 1972 Venice Film Festival, one year before the release of The Wailers' breakthrough reggae album Catch a Fire, The Harder They Come has been called the first feature-length film made in Jamaica by Jamaicans. It is certainly one of the first homegrown movies to achieve international acclaim.
The film's success can largely be attributed to the soundtrack, which sells well to this day and features tracks from Desmond Dekker, Toots and the Maytals, Jimmy Cliff - also the star of the film - and other music legends. The movie is credited with giving American and European movie audiences their first real exposure to reggae, ska, rocksteady and other forms of Jamaican music.
Anything but slick in its production values, The Harder They Come was shot on the cheap in a raw, unrehearsed style made all the more realistic for its locations: the chaotic streets of Kingston, with their tumbledown shacks and densely populated shanties, give the movie a distinctive verite feel. Named after Ivanhoe "Rhygin" Martin, a notorious outlaw of the 1940s ( rhygin is a Jamaican patois word meaning wild or bad), Cliff's character, Ivan Martin, is an unsophisticated "country boy".
The movie begins with Ivan taking a bus to visit his mother in Kingston after a death in the family. Within minutes of his arrival the clueless naif is robbed. Despite his mother's pleas for him to return to the countryside, the gentle Ivan has dreams of making it as a singer.
After a bumbling start he finds menial work doing odd jobs for a fire-and-brimstone preacher, and he embraces his inner reggae superstar by becoming something of a ladies' man and a dandy (bright, wide-collared rayon shirts, snug flares and colourful apple caps). The country boy now answers to a new nickname - Pretty Boy.