Hallelujah

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Actor(s):

Daniel L. Haynes, Nina Mae McKinney, William Fountaine, Harry Gray, Fanny Belle DeKnight

Director(s):

King Vidor, Roy Mack

Label: Warner Home Video
Publisher(s):

Warner Home Video

Studio: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
MPN: WARD67676D
Format(s): Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $17.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Editorial Reviews

Description

Hallelujah is a cinematic milestone: the first all-black feature from a major studio and famed director King Vidor's (The Champ, The Big Parade) first talkie. But the film surpasses its historical significance, telling a story of such profound dignity and understanding that it as fresh and moving as the day it premiered. Featuring a largely unknown cast and infused with spirituals, folk songs, blues and jazz (Irving Berlin provided two songs for the production), Hallelujah follows the fortunes of Zeke (Daniel L. Haynes), a poor cotton farmer. He succumbs to the temptations of Chick (Nina Mae McKinney), a mercenary honky-tonk girl, finds salvation in religion, and falls again when his obsession for Chick overpowers his better self. Love, loss, passion, redemption and brilliant moviemaking: Hallelujah has it all.

Amazon.com

Made in 1929, Hallelujah is an artifact of no small historical significance: the first major studio movie with an all-black cast and a white director (the esteemed King Vidor), it was also one of the earliest "talkies" after the silent film era. But it also has considerable artistic merit; simply put, Hallelujah is damned entertaining. Sure, the story isn't exactly subtle, a morality tale chronicling the tribulations of Zeke (Daniel L. Haynes), a poor cotton farmer who, succumbing to the carnal charms of the sexy Chick (Nina Mae McKinney, who was sometimes known as "the black Garbo"), finds himself caught up in a soul-scarring cycle of sin and salvation. There's also some painful dialogue of the "Where is you gwine?" and "Honey, I likes anything you's got!" variety. But the major themes presented here--temptation and transgression, redemption and repentance--are pure and universal, the dancing and singing (including two songs by Irving Berlin) are marvelous, and there are several scenes of extraordinary intensity. Those include Zeke's family's weeping, wailing response to the tragic death of his younger brother, followed by the repentant Zeke's turning to God, a sequence in which he's transformed into a latter day Martin Luther King, Jr., preaching with rhythms and cadences of hypnotic power. DVD extras include audio commentary by historian Donald Bogle, plus two shorts ("Pie, Pie Blackbird" and "The Black Network") featuring McKinney's singing, Eubie Blake's music, and the Nicholas Brothers' dance moves. A final note: Victoria Spivey, who portrays Missy Rose, the down home girl devoted to Zeke, was also one of the finest blues singers of the time. When she underwent a career revival in the early 1960s, she formed a record label whose first recording featured accompaniment by none other than Bob Dylan. --Sam Graham

Customer Reviews

Classic African-American Film

Daniel L. Haynes, the actor portraying the lead character of "Zeke" was a Denzel Washington born ahead of his time. The same is true of the captivating Nina Mae McKinney, a forerunner of say Dorothy Dandridge or Halle Berry. Two powerful screen performances from one of Hollywood's first talkies(1929). Sure the stereotypes are evident, but with story telling that is still relevant for today, especially in our modern society of loose morals and uncontrolled passions. Zeke's innocent and somewhat gullible character is tempted after the delivery in town of his poor families cotton farming endeavors, by the allurements of a beautiful young woman(Ms. McKinney), known simply as "Chick, who flirts with him and seduces him into a crooked fixed-dice gambling loss with her accomplice and apparent lover "Hot Shot". All the families hard earned money is squandered away. Seeking revenge, Zeke overpowers the conman's gun and fires it wildly into the bar crowd. Whether by his own rage or from the initial shots of his crooked intended target, his younger brother "Spunk" is killed. He returns home to his worried mother and father the next morning, a broken man, with his dead brother lying in the back of the wagon. During a mournful funeral service in which he couldn't find self-forgiveness to enter the church, his forgiving father exits the church and finds Zeke lying prostrate with grief. Looking to the heavens, his father encourages him to look to the deliverer for forgiveness.

Zeke finds "religion" and we flash forward to his extremely popular evangelistic efforts as "the prophet." And while parading through the streets on the back of a donkey, cheered on by hundreds, he is mocked by the same young temptress and Hot Shot. She even heckles him while he's preaching in a later scene, until the conviction of being the only soul left in the audience not to respond to brother Zeke's altar call. She is brought to tears, and cries out for bro. Zeke to save her from the devil as well. But as we are taken to the baptism of converts, Ms. McKinney at her loveliest, adorned in a white robe awaiting her turn to be baptized in the river, is caught up in the spirit of emotion and sinks into the arms of the prophet, who, under a hypnotic spell, carries her away into a nearby tent, in full view of the multitude, with not so religious intent. His Godly mother soon follows them inside the tent, and pulls her wayward son back to his senses. And at a later church revival, Bro. Zeke again loses all sense of moral judgement, when he spies her in the congregation "caught-up in the Spirit" and steps from the pulpit, into the ecstatic crowd where they meet, as she, under the guise of emotionalism, lures him out the church door, and they run away together hand-in-hand into a life of sin. Zeke's fiance, "Missy Rose" franticly follows them into the woods, searching in vain and crying out: "Don't leave me Zeke!" But their's is not a happy ending; tragic even. I won't spoil the rest of the story. If for no other reason, a unique addition of historic value to any film lover's collection. Director King Vidor's first talkie and Hollywood's first major African-American production. Originally released by M-G-M, a very decent transfer to DVD of this nearly 80 year old movie.

Truly Hallelujah

This was a truly fabulous movie. It was so good to see the cinematic efforts from so far back (1929). The commentary from the movie added to its historical impact. We have made tremenous progress since those days and our stars today should be proud to stand on their shoulders. I would reccommend this to all old cinema buffs.

How much Black nationalism has aged !!!

First talky by Vidor with only Black Afro-American actors. The second film of a quadrilogy that intended to reflect the great 1929 depression that was to throw the US into the arms of history, of reformism and social progress that will have to go through WW2 to finally come to a real leap forward that has never been finished nevertheless. The film shows first of all how much the US owed to the Blacks they had imported as enslaved cattle and that were starting to conquer a human position in a deeply unjust society, through the cultural development they brought and invested in US music. The musical side of the film is fascinating especially how all the gospels, blues and other songs are entirely integrated in real life in the very story of the film. They are part and parcel of it all and that shows how music, poetry, religion are one only thing that gets its life from and gives life to the real world. But... The desire to give a picture of the Black world in America as being an entirely self-contained society leads to two regrettable elements. For one the Blacks are not exploited by banks, by white society, by white capitalism. Then they have to contain the causes and reasons of all that is evil in their midst. And we have it all indeed. The main poor character gambles the money of the cotton harvest of his family and loses it to a Black cheater who uses fake dice and is using a woman to bait and trap Zeke into the game. Then Zeke will kill his brother in the ensuing brawl. Then he will become a preacher and will finally marry the woman who had gotten him into the dice game when she pretends to have changed and repented her evil ways. Yet she will try to elope with the gambler. Zeke will chase them, kill his wife and then the man. He will end up in a force labor camp, still with no whites anywhere. He will be paroled and go home to find all his family happy and forgiving. We then understand and have to admit the fable is naïve and even vicious since it exonerates the whites of all their responsibility for the morally and socially deprived Black community they relentlessly exploit, down to their very bones and blood. It may represent the Black nationalist movement of the time (the 1920s) but it shows how artificial and racist in the end this vision can be. Does the music save this tale? Probably not, even if it shows how much the music is embedded and encrusted in both the Blacks and the US.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Hallelujah!

Warner Home Video wisely places an opening disclaimer on this 75 year old chestnut, acknowledging that the portrayal of blacks is of its own time, and inevitably reflects some outdated racial stereotypes. This is simply for context, and should not discourage game viewers from staying put. "Hallelujah!" is a fascinating sociological document, and a deftly executed early talkie that tells a universal human story. We get a rare, tantalizing glimpse of Nina Mae McKinney, a charismatic singer/entertainer who enjoyed considerable success off-screen. The spiritual-style music is also first-rate, with two songs contributed by Irving Berlin.

A Little Archaic, Hard to Watch

I have watched several movies, all from Amazon, that could be in this same category: "Green Pastures" - one of our family's all time favorites; "Purlie Victorious" - not a great movie, but a lot of fun and causing us to buy these other movies; "Cabin in the Sky" - looked to be a lot of fun, with a famous cast, but the apparently defective DVD would run about fifteen minutes and then just lock up and finally fail. Next time it would play through the failure point and fail somewhere else, enough that we finally had to give up.

This brings me to Hallelujah, which is the earliest of all these movies. This also failed similar to "Cabin", but less often, so we were able to watch it through. It appears to be of historical interest and reminds me of movies, perhaps themselves old at that time, that I saw on TV over fifty years ago when a child.

Does this movie depict early black culture more accurately than do today's movies about the same period? I suppose in some ways it might, since it was made closer to the times it depicts. In other ways it probably does not, probably because the people of that time, whether blak or white, did not have the time or wherewithal to really understand what was strong or weak about the black culture in America.

There are certainly depictions that our modern American culture would see as demeaning or disrespectful, more so in this movie than the others mentioned above. Maybe there were enough of these that it was just kind of tiring and wearing to watch for me. I don't know that I learned a lot of historical interest, either. The movie is pretty primitive, and the plot utterly predictable. I suppose it would be of interest to students of film history.

I can't really recommend Hallelujah, but don't let that stop you from seeing "Purlie" or "Cabin", assuming the latter DVD will play for you. There is a disclaimer about possible material prejudicial of black cuture at the start of "Green Pastures", but I see nothing of the sort. It makes me feel good about being human every time I watch it.

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