The Hard Part Begins (1973) Have You Seen This?

Music/Drama • N/A • 87 Minutes • 1973

One-night stands, bar fights, outlaws, and a slew of broken hearts left behind were a staple of country music in the early 1970s. Long synonymous with American culture, the cowboy mythos soared during the start of the decade when musicians like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings gave the middle finger to Nashville and broke off to create the new sound of outlaw country music. Something must have kicked up in that red southern clay, travelled north and into the minds of director Paul Lynch and writer John Hunter, who took the ramblin’ man storytelling and applied it to their 1973 country music drama, The Hard Part Begins, but with a twist. So many of those outlaw country songs tell a story of hard living on the road — another dance hall, another woman, another whiskey. But Lynch and Hunter wanted to know: what happens when that country musician returns home?

Seemingly born in a smoky pool hall, The Hard Part Begins features Jim King (Donnelly Rhodes), a country singer in his mid-thirties still trying to make it big with his bandmates and girlfriend, Jenny Frame (Nancy Belle Fuller). He and his band play in boot-scuffed saloons and dingy pubs, only making enough money to get to their next gig. When King and his band return home from touring, his ex-wife, ex-lover, and son are less than excited to see him.

The Hard Part Begins scratches that 1970s itch I continue to scratch, especially through a remastered 4K that highlights the beautiful 16mm and focuses on the withered faces from King and the audience alike. Low lights, dusty floors, and a smoky interior pull you into those watering-holes that went extinct long ago, only to be survived by memories and films. Many men stood where Jim King stood, briefly smiling with a charming leather face, and a voice to soothe you — a voice cured from a lifetime of heavy drinking and even heavier smoking. You’d kick back, listen to the music, tip back your beer or swing your girl around the dance floor, all at the expense of the next morning. Damn, I wish they’d bring those places back.

Donnelly Rhodes plays Jim King as a man who wears his country heroes on his sleeve and is unapologetic in his dream of becoming country music’s newest star. According to Lynch himself, Rhodes’s career was on a downward trajectory, which he ended up bringing to the table in his performance of King — an aging musician who hasn’t seen many signs of success. Whether that was intentional or not remains unimportant; what is for sure is that Donnelly Rhodes brings a sombre yet charming portrayal of a type of man now only preserved in old fiction.

Within the band, King and Country, are Duane Eccles (Paul Bradley) and co-singer and girlfriend Jenny Frame, whose soft and beautiful face contrasts with King’s gruffness. Fuller, who brings out the June Carter to Rhodes’s Cash, becomes the film’s focal point in the third act, with her young, energetic, and alluring presence becoming more of the direction country music executives want to follow. When both Frame and King share the stage, their chemistry is unrivalled, like watching an act that’s moments away from making it big. But with slow corrosion within the band and band members getting switched out, King’s control over the music and his own future becomes stagnant. Although he is stubborn and someone who will never give up, he is a man you can always see solemnly walking away and into the sunset.

While the songs sung in The Hard Part Begins feel like they are coming from the mouths of Rhodes and Fuller, the voices actually belong to Zeke Sheppard and Louise Gadzala (who recorded as Louise Rockwood) — and oh my god, the music is incredible. Composed by Ian Guenther, the soundtrack deserved more than a cursory release back in the 70s and should have a remastered wide distribution. Paul Lynch mentions that the idea for the titular song, The Hard Part Begins (Every Mile), was actually in part inspired by another country song, The Easy Part’s Over, recorded by Charley Pride. Pride is widely considered country music’s first Black country star. The idea for the song plays directly to the themes of the film; although it might have been hard for Jim King throughout the years playing music and touring the province, that was the easy part, and now, returning home, the hard part begins.

So what does it look like when a country star returns home? Well, freedom experienced on the road is gone, the alcohol has dried up, and the band is no longer blinded by the spotlight. What remains for King is a son who never had a father figure, a wife who resents him for chasing stardom rather than focusing on their family, a dying friend, and the brother of an ex-lover who wants to hurt him. It’s resentment all the way down. The only thing King can focus on is striking it big and leaving all this pain behind — “every mile, every mile brings you closer to home” as the song goes.

The Hard Part Begins is a beautiful directorial feature-length debut by Paul Lynch, built on John Hunter’s tremendous screenplay. They would go on to work together again in 1978 in Blood & Guts, a precursor for Lynch before he directed the slasher hit Prom Night (1980). Hunter would go on to write 1983’s Genie Awards best picture and best screenplay winner The Grey Fox (1982). Together they create a portrait of an early 1970s Canadian country musician, struggling to live up to his dreams. Resurrected from the void of lost Canadian releases, The Hard Part Begins has been restored to a wonderful 4K release thanks to Canadian International Pictures and Vinegar Syndrome.