50 years later, 'The Harder They Come' remains a touchstone moment for Jamaica and reggae

In the late 1960s, a white Jamaican movie producer had a decision to make.

The late Perry Henzell wanted to tell a story about his country that would put a big spotlight, not on the lush tourist image of the island but rather on the tough lives endured by many of its Black inhabitants.

“Right then, my father had to choose, was this a movie for Jamaicans or a movie for the rest of the world?” says his daughter Justine Henzell. “My father decided it was for Jamaicans, and then he didn’t focus on anything but that.”

The movie that would emerge years later, after a series of financing setbacks, was 1972’s “The Harder They Come,” directed by Henzell, co-written by Trevor Rhone, and starring musician Jimmy Cliff.

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Henzell's film may have been made for Jamaicans, but it shook up the world visually and sonically. A half-century later, “Harder” endures as a compelling snapshot of Jamaican life with its story of an aspiring singer (Cliff) who heads to Kingston to realize his entertainment dreams but gets derailed into drug peddling with tragic consequences.

But don’t call it a Blaxploitation movie, despite its thematic overlaps with many stateside movies of that era. “My father’s opinion is that his movie was not a Blaxploitation film,” says Henzell, who now oversees rights to her father’s movie from her home in Jamaica. Henzell notes that both "The Harder They Come" and her father's second Jamaica-centric film, "No Place Like Home," will be showing on the Criterion Channel for six months starting in February.

“He loved those films, and had great respect for ("Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song"-auteur) Melvin Van Pebbles and the rest of those directors,” she says. “But Perry felt that, or any other term, whether it was 'cult classic' or 'midnight movie,' was too narrow a definition for what all of these films were doing. These were truly revolutionary movies in their own way.”

Movie brought reggae to the world

Arguably even more lasting than the film itself is its soundtrack, an irrepressible island breeze featuring top reggae artists from the preceding years, including The Melodians (“Rivers of Babylon”), The Maytals (“Pressure Drop”) and Desmond Dekker (“007 (Shanty Town)”).

Cliff, however, dominates the record with lasting songs such as “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” “Many Rivers to Cross,” “Sitting in Limbo,” and of course the title track which, according to Henzell, was recorded live on camera during the movie shoot.

“The movie was genuine, no one changed the way they talked or dressed or walked,” says Henzell. “My father would just set up a scene, and let it go. So when we see Jimmy singing ‘The Harder They Come’ on screen, that’s the version on the album.”

The impact of both the film and soundtrack was monumental, essentially putting Jamaica on the cultural map – especially when it came to reggae, exposing vast and often younger collegiate audiences to a genre that was so much more broader than the work of the genius Bob Marley.

“This movie establishes this type of music as a music of protest, as the music of the counterculture and of resistance,” says Scott Currie, associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Minnesota and director of the International Summer Institute for Reggae Studies.

Currie says reggae works to deliver its message of “defiance” much like a Trojan horse, with inspirational and revolutionary lyrics nestled in offbeats that make the music popular well beyond the confines of the Black power movement.

“Reggae is sort of this fly in the ointment, this truth that refuses to go away,” he says. “It’s very popular among white audiences as well as Black.”

In many ways, “The Harder They Come” presaged Jamaica’s outsized cultural influence, which would later also include touchstones such as the Jamaican Olympic Bobsled team, both in real life and through a movie, charismatic sprinter Usain Bolt, and even the current ubiquity of its green, black and yellow flag.

“You wonder how such a tiny island could have such an influence globally,” says Yohuru Williams, professor of history and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. “But that film did so much to make Jamaica a commercial enterprise.”

For Jamaicans, by Jamaicans

The signs of success erupted early on the day of the film’s premiere in Kingston, Henzell recalls. “It was June 5, 1972, no one could get in, there were lines around the block which then lasted weeks,” she says.

At that premiere, moviegoers hooted and hollered, “laughing and crying and shouting at the screen, where they saw people like themselves, speaking in their patois,” says Henzell, noting that the accent was so thick the film later had subtitles in more standard English.

When her father took the film on the road to film festivals, he at first feared he had a flop when, in Ireland, “there was dead silence throughout the movie,” Henzell recalls with a laugh. “But it won an audience award. It was just a different kind of audience.”

Fast forward through the ensuing decades, and in 2006 the movie morphed into a musical that debuted in England. Henzell recalls attending rehearsals “and seeing all these young Black performers in sneakers and sweats in red, green and gold, and it was clear to them that this Jamaican iconography was no big deal. But I had to explain to them, this musical came from a movie that led to them wearing those colors.”

She also says that to this day, she gets thrill when any reggae song comes on the radio.

"My kids all say to me, 'Mom, calm down, what's the big deal?' " she says. "To them it's never been any other way, but I remember when things weren't that way."

In early August 2022, Jamaicans will celebrate the 60th anniversary of their independence from Great Britain.

A few months before that, Henzell says the island will mark a different kind of milestone when people gather to fete "the 50th anniversary of 'The Harder They Come' with art and other exhibitions that not so much look back but rather celebrate what is creative in Jamaica right now.”

She's excited for that moment, a time to stop and really ponder the legacy of her father's iconic film.

And might there one day soon be a reboot of this seminal Jamaican document, just as "Shaft" and "Super Fly" have enjoyed in recent years?

“There are plans,” says Henzell, laughing. “But I can’t talk about it.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Harder They Come' brought Jamaica, and reggae, to the world