I first stumbled throughout The Tougher They Come throughout an particularly bitter winter stroll. Loneliness led to an aimless wander by way of the then unknown to me locations surrounding campus, and the same old reliance on music (and artwork usually) for escapism and familiarity led to replaying Earl Sweatshirt’s dreary 2018 report some rap songs. The hazy nature of the instrumentals virtually at all times meant that the lyrics handed by with out putting my ears an excessive amount of, till one in every of my favorite tracks on the album featured the road “Within the blistering chilly, watching Tougher They Come”. Some Googling later, I discovered the movie that the road was referring to, an virtually completely forgotten 1972 Jamaican movie directed by Perry Henzell a couple of struggling artist in Kingston making an attempt to make his manner as a reggae artist.
All sounds nicely and good with the premise. Nothing like a healthful rise to stardom comedy within the winter to remedy a lighter case of the blues, proper? Improper! As The Tougher They Come has little curiosity in protagonist Ivanhoe’s rise to stardom within the Reggae world (performed by actual Reggae artist Jimmy Cliff!). As a substitute, the movie is an icy neo-realist movie that takes inspiration from movies like Vittorio De Sica’s well-known Bicycle Thieves and the lesser identified Uptight by Jules Dassin, making for a movie which begins gentle sufficient however progressively turns into darker as even the colorful Jamaican streets flip crimson with bloodshed and capitalism continues to take maintain.
As if Ken Loach went to Jamaica to make a terrific movie about an city legend character who makes music, offers medication, will get in bother with the police and ‘takes on the person’ (because the tagline says), The Tougher They Come is simply good, and but it stays an intensely unsung movie in the same option to work like Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends (1978) or your favorite experimental brief filmmaker’s most obscure movie. Maybe that’s because of the Jamaican setting, maybe it’s because of the movie being made in 1972 or possibly it’s one thing else completely, however it doesn’t matter what the reason being for this movie’s lack of reward in comparison with most movies prefer it (when it comes to high quality, theme and type), its standing is undeserved and in want of reappraisal. Fortunately, its latest break into the 1001 Films You Should See Earlier than You Die listing ought to assist it discover its standing culturally.
To return full circle, the irony of discovering a movie like this by way of a mainstream 2018 album isn’t misplaced on me, and neither is the truth that I watched such a sun-drenched movie on a day so chilly that I needed to bathe after I bought in to shake the coolness from my bones. The truth is, nothing involving my expertise with this movie is misplaced on me – each the movie itself and my private expertise with it are near my coronary heart, and the movie’s stunning empathy, attractive cinematography (as vibrant as Touki Bouki!) and nice sentiments concerning the police make it a should look ahead to any movie fan.
The Tougher They Come is now accessible on Blu-Ray and DVD.
