Hallelujah (film)

Hallelujah
Illustration of a woman in a short, tight dress dancing with a jazz band below.
Advertisement illustrated by Al Hirschfeld
Directed byKing Vidor
Written byKing Vidor (story)
Wanda Tuchock (scenario)
Richard Schayer (treatment)
Ransom Rideout (dialogue)
StarringDaniel L. Haynes
Nina Mae McKinney
William Fountaine
CinematographyGordon Avil
Edited byHugh Wynn
Music byIrving Berlin
Production
company
Distributed byMetro-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)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

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 films with an all-African American cast produced by a major studio. (Although frequently touted as Hollywood's first all-black cast musical, that distinction more properly belongs to Hearts in Dixie, which premiered several months earlier.) 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."[3][4] In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.[5]

The film contains two scenes of "trucking": a contemporary dance craze where the participant makes movements backward and forward, but with no actual change of position, whilst moving the arms like a piston on a locomotive wheel.[6]

  1. ^ Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, ed. (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. ^ "Cinematic Classics, Legendary Stars, Comedic Legends and Novice Filmmakers Showcase the 2008 Film Registry". Library of Congress. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
  4. ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
  5. ^ "Berlinale 2020: Retrospective "King Vidor"". Berlinale. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  6. ^ Pines, Jim (1975). Blacks in Films. Littlehampton Book Services Ltd. ISBN 978-0289703267.