Hallelujah (film)

Hallelujah
Directed by King Vidor
Written by King Vidor (story)
Wanda Tuchock (scenario)
Richard Schayer (treatment)
Ransom Rideout (dialogue)
Starring Daniel L. Haynes
Nina Mae McKinney
William Fountaine
Music by Irving Berlin
Cinematography Gordon Avil
Edited by Hugh Wynn
Production
company
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • August 20, 1929 (1929-08-20)
Running time
 109 minutes (original release), 100 minutes (1939 re-issue, the version available on DVD)
Country United States
Language English

Hallelujah is a 1929 American Pre-Code Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical directed by King Vidor, and starring Daniel L. Haynes and Nina Mae McKinney.

Filmed in Tennessee and Arkansas and chronicling the troubled quest of a sharecropper, Zeke Johnson (Haynes), and his relationship with the seductive Chick (McKinney), Hallelujah was one of the first all-black films by a major studio. It was intended for a general audience and was considered so risky a venture by MGM that they required King Vidor to invest his own salary in the production. Vidor expressed an interest in "showing the Southern Negro as he is"[1] and attempted to present a relatively non-stereotyped view of African-American life.

Hallelujah was King Vidor's first sound film, and combined sound recorded on location and sound recorded post-production in Hollywood.[2] King Vidor was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for the film.

In 2008, Hallelujah was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Development

Years before creating Hallelujah, King Vidor had longed to make a film employing an all-Black cast. He had floated the idea around for years but “the studio kept turning the idea down”.[3] Vidor’s luck would change come 1928, while he was in Europe promoting his film, The Crowd, he caught wind of the emergence of audible motion pictures sweeping the nation. This was important because he was very enthusiastic about the idea of having an all-Black cast singing “negro spirituals” on the silver screen, after he had seen the success of it on Broadway. Vidor stated, “If stage plays with all negro casts, and stories like those by Octavus Roy Cohen and others, could have such great success, why shouldn’t the screen make a successful negro play?”.[4] Vidor was able to convince Nicholas Schenck, who was the president of MGM at the time, to get the movie made by framing it more as a film that depicted the African-American’s sexual deviance. Schenck put it simply to Vidor, “Well, if you think like that, I’ll let you make a picture about whores”.[5] Vidor received the inspiration to create this film based on real incidents he witnessed as a child during his time at home in the south, where he would observe Black folks. He went on to say, “I used to watch the negroes in the South, which was my home. I studied their music, and I used to wonder at the pent-up romance in them”.[6] Vidor began shooting in Arkansas, Memphis and Southern California at the MGM studios.

Plot

Sharecroppers Zeke and Spunk Johnson sell their family's portion of the cotton crop for $100. They are promptly cheated out of the money by the shill Chick (Nina Mae McKinney), in collusion with her gambling-hustler boyfriend, Hot Shot. Spunk is murdered in the ensuing brawl. Zeke runs away and reforms his life, becoming a minister, Zekiel.

Sometime later, he returns and preaches a rousing revival. After being ridiculed and enticed by Chick, Zekiel becomes engaged to a virtuous maiden named Missy (Victoria Spivey), thinking this will ward off his desires for the sinful Chick. Chick attends a sermon, heckling Zekiel, then asks for baptism but is clearly not truly repentant. During a rousing sermon, Chick seduces Zekiel and he throws away his new life for her. Months later, Zeke has started a new life; he is working at a log mill and is married to Chick, who is secretly cheating on him with her old flame, Hot Shot (William Fountaine).

Chick and Hot Shot decide run off together, just as Zeke finds out about the affair, Zeke chases after them. The carriage carrying both Hot Shot and Chick loses a wheel and throws Chick out, giving Zeke a chance to catch up to them. Holding her in his arms, he watches Chick die as she apologizes to him for being unable to change her ways. Zeke then chases Hot Shot on foot. He stalks him relentlessly through the woods and swamp while Hot Shot tries to escape, but stumbles until Zeke finally catches and kills him. Zeke spends time in a work camp, breaking rocks. The movie ends with Zeke returning home to his family, just as they are harvesting their crop. Despite the time that has passed and the way Zekiel left, the family joyfully welcome him back into the flock.

Cast

The music

The film gives, in some sections, a remarkably authentic representation of black entertainment and religious music in the 1920s, which no other film achieves, though some of the sequences are rather Europeanised and over-arranged. For example, the outdoor revival meeting, with the preacher singing and acting out the "Train to hell," is entirely authentic in style until the end, where he launches into Irving Berlin's "Waiting at the End of the Road". Similarly, an outdoor group of workers near the beginning of the film are singing a choral arrangement of "Way Down Upon the Swanee River" (written by Stephen Foster, who never went anywhere near the South). Supposedly, according to Vidor himself in an interview given to the New York Times, “while Stephen Foster and others were inspired by hearing negro songs on the levees, their music was not at all of the negro type.” He went on to add that Foster’s music had “the distinct finish and technique of European music, possibly of German Origin.” [7]

A sequence which is of vital importance in the history of classic jazz is in the dancehall, where Nina Mae McKinney performs Irving Berlin's "Swanee Shuffle." Although actually filmed in a New York studio using black actors, the sequence gives an accurate representation of a low-life black dance-hall - part of the roots of classic jazz. Most Hollywood films of the period sanitized black music.

Given the equipment available at the time the film's soundtrack is a remarkable achievement, employing a much wider range of editing and mixing techniques than was generally used in "talkies" of this period.

Reception

Hallelujah was commercially and critically successful. Photoplay praised the film for its depiction of African Americans and commented on the cast: "Every member of Vidor's cast is excellent. Although none of them ever worked before a camera or a microphone before, they give unstudied and remarkably spontaneous performances. That speaks a lot for Vidor's direction."[8] The New York Times spoke highly of the all-Black cast, stating, “Hallelujah!, with its clever negro cast, is one of the few talking pictures that is really a separate and distinct form of entertainment from a stage play”.[9] The combination of two groundbreaking aspects of the film, audible dialogue and an all-Black cast, really set the movie apart from its contemporaries. Some of the critiques of the film spoke volumes to the particular spirit of the times, and would likely be vastly different today. For example, in the New York Times, Morduant Hall writes about how “in portraying the peculiarly typical religious hysteria of the darkies and their gullibility, Mr. Vidor atones for any sloth in preceding scenes.”[10] It is important to note that at that point in history, this film was one of the early projects that gave Blacks significant roles in a movie and had “a freshness and truth that was not attained again for thirty years”.[11]

Controversy

Although revered in its innovative production style and inclusion of an all-Black cast, history later revealed the negative implications which would follow in the coming years. Due to its grossly stereotypical roles and portrayal of the African American, the film only really helped to contribute to the culture of diminishing the Black person’s experience. According to Kevin K. Gaines at the University of Michigan, “Guided by southern apologists for lynching (the execution of persons without benefit of trial by mobs), many whites, regardless of income or education, viewed the aspirations of black men and women through the warped lens of crude racial and sexual stereotypes that accused all blacks of criminality and immorality.”[12] This lens of racial and sexual stereotypes was amplified in movies such as Vidor’s Hallelujah!, and even received disdain from Paul Robeson (who was originally asked to play the role of Zeke but who turned it down), who reportedly “loathed” the movie, according to historian Scott Eyman.[13] Furthermore, it is believed that the film’s “reputation is based largely on the fact that it was made at all”.[14] Also, one of the more famous of the 1920s among African American actresses, Nina Mae McKinney, had a notable performance in that it was the first known instance of the “black whore” to be utilized on screen.[15] This display only went on to set forth a legacy illustrating “Black women (as) money grabbers, connivers and vamps”.[16]

References

  1. ↑ Nowell-Smith, edited by Geoffrey (1997). The Oxford History of World Cinema (paperback ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 500. ISBN 9780198742425.
  2. ↑ Donald Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926–1931 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 405. ISBN 0-684-19585-2
  3. ↑ Robinson, Cedric J. (2007). Forgeries of memory and meaning : Blacks and the regimes of race in American theater and film before World War II. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807858417.
  4. ↑ "ANOTHER NEGRO FILM: King Vidor Realizes Ambition by Making "Hallelujah," an Audible Picture His Ambition". New York Times. 2 June 1929.
  5. ↑ Robinson, Cedric J. (2007). Forgeries of memory and meaning : Blacks and the regimes of race in American theater and film before World War II. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807858417.
  6. ↑ "ANOTHER NEGRO FILM: King Vidor Realizes Ambition by Making "Hallelujah," an Audible Picture His Ambition". New York Times. 2 June 1929.
  7. ↑ "ANOTHER NEGRO FILM: King Vidor Realizes Ambition by Making "Hallelujah," an Audible Picture His Ambition". New York Times. 2 June 1929.
  8. ↑ Kreuger, Miles (ed.), The Movie Musical from Vitaphone to 42nd Street as Reported in a Great Fan Magazine (New York: Dover Publications), p. 70. ISBN 0-486-23154-2
  9. ↑ Hall, Mordaunt (25 August 1929). "Vidor's Negro Film: Hallelujah" Reveals Adroit Blending of Photography and Dialogue". New York Times.
  10. ↑ Hall, Mordaunt (25 August 1929). "Vidor's Negro Film: Hallelujah" Reveals Adroit Blending of Photography and Dialogue". New York Times.
  11. ↑ Mills, Michael (2011). "Midnight Ramble: The Negro in Early Hollywood Introduction". Modern Times. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved 11 November 2016.
  12. ↑ Gaines, Kevin. "Racial Uplift Ideology in the Era of 'the Negro Problem". nationalhumanitiescenter.org. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  13. ↑ Eagan, Daniel (2010). America's film legacy : the authoritative guide to the landmark movies in the National Film Registry ([Online-Ausg.]. ed.). New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-0826429773.
  14. ↑ Eagan, Daniel (2010). America's film legacy : the authoritative guide to the landmark movies in the National Film Registry ([Online-Ausg.]. ed.). New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-0826429773.
  15. ↑ Bogle, Donald (2001). Toms, coons, mulattoes, mammies, and bucks : an interpretive history of Blacks in American films (4. ed.). New York, NY [u.a.]: Continuum. ISBN 978-0826412676.
  16. ↑ Smith-Shomade, Beretta E. (2002). Shaded lives : African American women and television. New Brunswick, NJ [u.a.]: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813531052.
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