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Perdues dans New York (Jean Rollin, 1989)

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James Fee.

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The Beaches of Agnès (2008) dir. Agnès Varda

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The Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany via /r/ArchitecturePorn https://www.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturePorn/comments/p0pg7c/the_einstein_tower_in_potsdam_germany/?utm_source=ifttt

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#735: ‘The Harder They Come’, dir. Perry Henzell, 1972.

Now this is what I’m talking about when I refer to a national cinema that actually says something about the culture that produced it. It is true that most early national cinemas are interested in mythologising, but there’s a difference in the kind of mythmaking that Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer is doing as opposed to something like The Harder They Come is working towards. To begin with, the form of cultural heroism being explored is far different here. Like the American crime films of the 1930s, Henzell’s film uses the ‘success story’ form, cautioning against trying to achieve it through improper means while also glamourising the actions the protagonist takes. But Henzell is also showing us the main sights on this tour at breakneck speed, dispensing with almost all the usual techniques of character development and instead using the film’s plot as a way of showcasing the talents of the film’s lead actor.

By casting Jimmy Cliff, a reggae star, as Ivanhoe, this film becomes as much a crime story as it does a thinly-fictionalised music documentary. Most of its continuing impact on the world mediascape is as the film that introduced reggae music to cultures outside Jamaica. Internally, it also presented Jamaican audiences with a culture and form of language that they recognised but which had not been seen on the big screen until this point. (It was jocularly billed on the midnight movies circuit in America as the first English-language film that required English subtitles, without which it was basically incomprehensible.)

The audiences no doubt recognised the connections between the reggae scene and the marijuana trade, and how they were both (as they are in the film) controlled in similar ways by people with vested interests in both. In The Harder They Come, the record producers who shortchange Ivanhoe and pay him only $20 for recording the film’s title song thus drive him to crime to pay for the life he wants. The producers use Ivan’s crime spree as an excuse to release the record and make even more money off him. In the meantime, the police have closed off the weed trade in an attempt to get other criminals to inform on Ivan’s whereabouts, a move the producers can cynically see is likely to backfire if it continues. Because this film was the defining text for other audiences being introduced to Jamaican culture, however, it’s easy to see how this connection to petty crime could be all the rest of the world could reliable associate with reggae, and this connection would last for the next twenty years in the fascination, particularly in America, with reggae and weed (the connection was still pretty dang prevalent where I grew up in New Zealand). This is why crime films are one of the more interesting modes of mythologising: everyone likes to imagine themselves as a charismatic rule-breaker like Ivan, laughing while driving a stolen car across a golf course. The stronger these connections become, the stronger and more appealing the myth gets, because it’s impossible to take one aspect (reggae) without everything else coming along for the ride.

The crime film, simply put, is always going to be more interesting than the drama. The protagonist is driven by desire rather than the temptation to avoid desire, and so Sonny Corleone will always be more appealing than Rick from Casablanca, even though their situations are broadly similar. The Harder They Come is also unabashedly sexual, increasing the allure of Ivan’s life by showing him and the women he encounters in various states of nudity, and contrasting this against the supposedly pious behaviour they display during daylight hours.

Style-wise, The Harder They Come is at its peak in the last half-hour, when Ivan’s run from the police becomes almost distracted. Henzell seems to be more invested in dramatic set-pieces than he is in explaining how Ivan gets from one encounter to another, but this increases the tension of the film. At times the narrative nearly splits apart - Ivan’s shoulder wound from a shootout seems to bother him intermittently on those rare occasions when he remembers he has it - but this could speak to his slow mental collapse, too. In his final shootout, he takes inspiration from the Spaghetti Westerns he was shown early on, fantasising about cheering audiences while he challenges the machine-gun-armed unit sent to take him down. As he is riddled with bullets, we don’t even have the denouement of Bonnie and Clyde, or the contextual impact of Scarface. Instead, we cut savagely to the credits, playing over the torso of a gyrating woman. So at least the film knows how to double down on its style.

One note, though? The credits do list ten different reggae tracks, although by the sound of the film you’d suspect there were only three, played seemingly at random throughout the film’s duration. It’s one of the only exhausting things about this film, which is otherwise an entertaining blast.

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The Harder They Come Movie HD

Blue Beat & Ska

The Harder They Come is a 1972 Jamaican crime film directed by Perry Henzell and co-written by Trevor D. Rhone, and starring Jimmy Cliff. The film is most famous for its reggae soundtrack that is said to have “brought reggae to the world”. The film was a sensation in Jamaica due to its naturalistic portrayal of black Jamaicans in real locations and its use of local Patois (Jamaican Creole). However, the popularity of the movie was limited outside of Jamaica because the local Patois spoken by the characters was so thick that it required subtitles, making it possibly “the first English-language movie in history to require subtitles in the United States”.

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Sabu Dastagir, June Duprez and Rex Ingram behind the scenes of The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

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The Thief of Bagdad

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Directors: Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell & Tim Whelan

Director of Photography: Georges Perinal

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Click through for HQ

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source

Haverst on Instagram

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Ida (2013)

Director: Pawel Pawlikowski 

Cinematographers: Ryszard Lenczewski & Lukasz Zal

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This Is Not A Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019, dir. Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, DP Pierre De Villiers)

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This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese - 2019)

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Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese - This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019)

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Shirin Neshat, “All demons flee”, 1995.