83 The Harder They Come

[In Heaven]

So which dvd of this is better? Criterion or non-?

[Cinephrenic]

Just a reminder that this is going out-of-print this month of September.

[Karva]

Amazon.com has a listing for a new special edition that's going to be released this August.

Well I think it's going to be August. That's what the listing on circuitcity.com says. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[colinr0380]

[quote="portnoy"]per Criterionco.com:

[quote]Perry Henzell, 1936-2006
Legendary filmmaker and author Perry Henzell, who has been called “the godfather of film in Jamaica,â€

[Gregory]

I didn't even know he had bone marrow cancer -- how awful. And for seven years! He must have suffered incredibly. I will watch The Harder They Come again soon.

If this sad news stirs up interest in Henzell's career it might mean a better chance of a DVD release of No Place Like Home.

[downrightindie]

So I have a question. I bought the Xenon 30th anniversary edition and noticed a difference in the credits. The Xenon version has small white-ish credits at the beginning and end. After I watched this I had to go grab the oop criterion of this film(it's magnificent). So I got my hands on one and I noticed the credits were orange and very large, at the beginning and at the end; they seemed like they didn't even belong there. So whats the deal?

[colinr0380]

The Criterion Contraption essay.

[dad1153]

Saw this on Criterion DVD a few months back. I liked it but (a) the soundtrack is catchy but not that spectacular (not a fan of this type of music though) and (b) the whole "Django" effect on Ivan has been blown way out of proportion. It's just a small scene that shows this musically-talented but violence-prone character a poor role model to emulate, but Ivan would have followed his self-destructive path regardless of whether he saw a movie or not. The plot's circumstances were such that Ivan would have been abused, exploited, provoked an (eventually) unleashed regardless of whether he saw "Django" or not. If it weren't (a) Jimmy Cliff playing the title role and (b) produced and shot in Jamaica (which gives it a very exotic look/feel for Westerners) "The Harder They Fall" would be standard-issued 70's blaxploitation grindhouse fodder.

Gotta give props to Cliff though, he totally sold me that he was a poor rural immigrant struggling to eck a living in Kingston while (a) trying to break into the corrupt recording industry and (b) wooing the affections of the girl he likes (Janet Bartley). The almost-no-budget location shoot, terrific soundtrack and sense of time and place (forever capturing Jamaica as it was circa 1971) gives "The Harder They Fall" an unusual-for-its-genre sense of personality and purpose despite the hordes of rags-to-riches cliches. I loved the 180 degree tonal shift Henzell pulls at the halfway mark, turning what was shaping up as a "Star is Born"-type struggle into "Bonnie and Clyde" w/o Bonnie. It's both jarring and liberating. When Ivan carjacks the luxury vehicle in front of the hotel for the sole purpose of messing up the country club's golf course across the street it's both anarchic and totally cinematic (great GOD-like POV camera angle, and the song that kicks in totally sells the moment).

[dx23]

A tidbit on one of the recent Rolling Stones issues mentions that Jimmy Cliff is working on a sequel to this film.

[Matango]

No prizes for guessing what the title will be.

[dx23]

Justine Henzell, the director's daughter wants to do a remake of this film. Next year is the 40th anniversary. I wonder if Criterion will re-acquire the rights and release it on Blu-ray.

[dwk]

Um, Perry Henzell has been dead for 5 years

[dx23]

Um, Perry Henzell has been dead for 5 years

Cleared my original post after misreading the news. A little hard for Perry to direct a film from where he is at right now.

[jbeall]

Weekend at Perry's?

[Wu.Qinghua]

So which dvd of this is better? Criterion or non-?

I've just revisited 'The Harder They Come', which is one of my all-time favourites, to have a look at that marvellous sequence on the 'cultural industry'; that is Ivan, having just arrived in Kingston, going to the Rialto to watch Corbucci's Django etc.

Having both the old Criterion and the British Revolver (2007) and comparing them, I found the British disc only offering a 5.1 Surround remix, which sounds terrible, especially on headphones. The Criterion being OOP, the Revolver might be the only way to go, if you are in need of a DVD with English subtitles (I haven't seen the German edition yet), but it definitively features an inferior transfer and an inadequate audio track. I guess we will have to wait for a decent, English-subbed edition for the time being, haven't we?

[Moe Dickstein]

Anyone know if there are rampant bootlegs of this? I found a suspiciously cheap copy online.

[JPJ]

I guess there's Chinese bootlegs of just about every Criterion title.Few years ago I accidently bought the local copy of Port of shadows(the cover claims the film was directed by David Lean!)from some fucker,fortunately the new Studio Canal blu is just around the corner.

[MichaelB]

Tony Rayns bought the Second Run guys a Chinese bootleg of Andrzej Żuławski's The Third Part of the Night, which blatantly lifted their cover art but added the intriguing and wholly erroneous claim that it was a French erotic classic.

[mteller]

Limited theatrical run in the US/UK in September, with a Blu-Ray coming from Xenon later this year.

[Gregory]

It's surprising that this has been OOP for 8 years and yet there are still like-new copies available for below the original retail price. There must have been quite a supply of this release.

[Lemmy Caution]

The Harder They Come was recently released by the pirates of China a couple months ago and is currently still in the shops.

I'd have to think a bit to come up with which Criterions have never been available in China.
I'd been waiting for Martha Graham and WC Fields for years and years but they finally turned up this Summer.
The Paul Robeson set has never been available in China.
And neither has Koko, A Talking Gorilla.