We have been curating and holding screenings of music films for years. As soon as the “Soundtrack Tel Aviv” festival for music in cinema and television was launched, and we aspired to be its artistic directors, we realized that this was an opportunity to fulfill some private dreams for ourselves. Our hope is that the festival – which will be held at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque on November 15-19 – will fulfill many dreams for many people. What is certain is that he will accomplish a few things, such as finally seeing “The Harder They Come” on a big screen (or “And when they torture him”, as we chose to call it in Hebrew because as far as we were able to find out, we never gave it a name in Hebrew) – Something we haven’t had yet.
This 1972 Jamaican crime film was released just a decade after Jamaica gained its independence from the United Kingdom. It is considered the first full-length Jamaican film, the most successful Jamaican film abroad and probably the most valued, important and influential Caribbean film of all time. And if we had to make a list of the ten movies that we personally like the most, he would definitely star in it. This realistic and musical Jamaican film has become a worldwide cult, a must watch for any lover of reggae and Jamaican culture. It’s a really big film and not esoteric by any means, but being a Jamaican film from 50 years ago, it wasn’t easy to get it for the festival. To say the least.
When you buy films for screening at a festival, many times it is closed with a simple correspondence of a few emails. That was not the case with this film. Since it was the first full-length Jamaican film, you can imagine that it did not break out into an active and orderly film industry. In other words – go find the production company or the rights holders, and God knows we searched. And we searched and searched and searched. After hitting a few wrong places and a dead end or two, we found the distribution company in Los Angeles, but they didn’t answer our emails. We had to call the offices on the phone, and they didn’t answer there either. After engaging a mystery contact in New Jersey we were eventually able to contact the distribution company that owns the rights.
In the end we also reached the Jamaican filmmaker Justine Hansel, daughter of the late Perry Hansel, the director/screenwriter/producer of “And When They Torture Him” - the visionary who single-handedly awakened the Jamaican film industry. She, his daughter, will also join the 50th birthday party for the film we will hold at the Cinematheque in a video call straight from Jamaica, which will be moderated by our man for Jamaican cultural affairs – Ron Levy Aria. He will also give a short introductory lecture before the screening, because we believe that any cultural celebration can only benefit from context.
Hansel chose to cast a well-known musician in his film – reggae star Jimmy Cliff, who played Ivanhoe “Ivan” Martin, a Jamaican boy who leaves his village after the death of his grandmother and moves to live with his poor mother in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. Ivan writes and performs the song “The Harder They Come”, which is stolen by a corrupt music producer who pays him only $20 for it, even though it becomes a hit. From there he gets involved with drug dealers and people of the underworld.
The character of Ivanhoe Martin is based on Vincent Ivanhoe Martin, known as “Raging” – a Jamaican folk hero. The real Ivanhoe was a wanted criminal in the 1940s, when he was a teenager. He became famous in his country in 1948 after escaping from prison, then committing a series of robberies and murders before being captured and shot dead by the police at the age of 24. Ionho became an anti-hero adored by the poor inhabitants of Jamaica’s ghettos, much like American criminals during the Depression. The big one, like John Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde. The real Ivanhoe inspired Henzel in creating the hero of his film, and this despite the fact that he was neither a musician nor a drug dealer, and he died nearly a quarter of a century before the plot took place. Hansel explained in an interview that he created his hero by combining the story of the famous Jamaican criminal with the story of Jimmy Cliff, who himself came to Kingston at a young age to become a singer. Unlike the hero he portrays, Cliff managed to release his first hit at the age of 14, and he maintains a successful music career to this day.
“And when they torture him” was a huge success in his country. This is the first time Jamaican blacks have seen themselves on the big screen and heard characters speaking in Jamaican patois. The film impressively reflects the time and place in which it was made, the street fashion and street language of Kingston in the early 1970s. The impact of this was huge. Even outside Jamaica the film received good reviews. One reviewer wrote that it was “a million times more intelligent than Last Tango in Paris” – Bernardo Bertolucci’s film starring Marlon Brando that came out that year.
Outside his country, the film received the status of a cult film and is frequently screened at midnight screenings in art-house cinemas in all kinds of places around the world. But the film’s soundtrack was a huge international success and even holds the credit for bringing reggae to an American and international audience, even before Eric Clapton’s cover of “I Shot the Sheriff” and Bob Marley’s international breakthrough. The film’s theme song, supposedly written by the film’s hero (and actually written by the film’s star), was a huge hit.
Jimmy Cliff wrote and recorded it especially for the soundtrack, and over the years the song has been performed by countless artists in a variety of genres. Among others, it was performed by Jerry Garcia (the man of the Grateful Dead), the band Madness, Joe Jackson, Willie Nelson and Keith Richards. In addition to it, the soundtrack contains some earlier singles by Cliff and some reggae classics by other artists, such as The Melodyans, Desmond Decker, and Toots and the Maytles. The soundtrack is still considered one of the best reggae collections. It stars in the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list by “Rolling Stone” magazine, and in 2003 it was reissued in a big and glorious way.
“And when they torture him” is a rare glimpse into the streets of Kingston in the seventies and a sure way to fall in love with Jamaica and reggae music. In addition to the events of the film’s 50th birthday, we will connect it at the festival with another film that we really like – “Coco Ben 19”, which will be screened later that day. This Israeli film from 1985 by director Danny Verta is a drama about an oriental boy from a poor Jerusalem neighborhood who plays in a band with his friends, and it bears quite a few similarities to “And when they torture him”. We will dwell on these parallel lines in a preliminary lecture before the screening of “Coco Ben 19”. It is highly recommended to watch both films consecutively.
“And when they torture him” (The Harder They Come) at the Tel Aviv Soundtrack Festival at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, Friday (11/18) Tickets and more details here. Details and tickets for the screening “Coco Ben 19”, which will take place immediately after, can be found here