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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Comedy > Third World Cinema > Jamaica > Reggae > Gangster > Documentary > 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)

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


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