Hallelujah! (1929 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Hallelujah (disambiguation).

The film Hallelujah! (1929) was an MGM musical directed by King Vidor and starring Daniel L. Haynes and the then unknown Nina Mae McKinney.

Filmed in Tennessee and narrating 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. Though the film is in part contrived and sometimes condescending; something King Vidor himself later admitted, his own sincerity is evident, it stands out from its contemporaries in its positive and relatively un-stereotyped treatment of an African-American subject and was considered at the time to be a breakthrough for American cinema. In fact, it was a false dawn; it has no immediate successor as an attempt at an honest treatment of African-American life. Its treatment of African-Americans is a sharp contrast to the fear and racism displayed in Birth of a Nation, which came out in 1915.

Hallelujah! was King Vidor's first sound film. Because it was shot on location away from Hollywood the sound was dubbed in afterwards. King Vidor was nominated for a best director Oscar for the film.

[edit] Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Sharecroppers Zeke and Spunk Johnson sell their part of the cotton crop and get $100. Cheated out of the money by Zeke's girlfriend Chick (sixteen-year-old Nina Mae McKinney in possibly her greatest role) in collusion with her gambling-hustler friends, Spunk is murdered in the ensuing brawl. Zeke runs away and reforms his life, becoming a minister. Sometime later he returns and preaches a rousing revival. Now engaged to a virtuous maiden named Missy (Victoria Spivey) , he finds that Chick is still interested in him. She asks for baptism, but is clearly not truly repentant. Tragically, Zeke throws away his new life for her.