Hallelujah (1929)

King Vidor's "Hallelujah"

While King Vidor was touring Europe in 1928 promoting his film "The Crowd," he received news that talking pictures were sweeping the nation. Vidor believed that this was the perfect opportunity to make a sound film that featured an all black cast, especially since music and singing were a vital instrument to the black community's culture. He wanted to create a film that featured a humanist take on the black experience, rather than continue in the condemning depiction they've come to experience up until this point. He was inspired by what he saw from the black community when he was growing up in Southeast Texas. He notes, "I used to watch the negros in the South, which was my home. I studied their music, and I used to wonder at the pent-up romance in them." The depiction of the black American in the film over the past century has received both positive and negative reactions. Some believe that even with his humanist approach, the film still propagates certain stereotypes of the black community - as any film made from a white perspective would. Others view the film as a progressive invention, utilized in a positive way to portray the black community as human beings unobstructed by resentment or condemnation from the auteur. Because of it's all black cast and it's depictions of black Americans in a humanist light, Vidor had a difficult time pitching the film to MGM. He believed that audiences would flock to see the film, white and black alike. His passion for this project and MGM's hesitation caused Vidor to invest his own salary to get it made. The director ended up being right, as the film received critical success while also being one of the highest grossing films of 1929. 

The film opens on a group of agrarian sharecroppers picking cotton. We see them in a community, working and singing together. As they go about their day - it becomes apparent of the closeness of the family. They work together in the fields, sing and dance together in the night, and sleep in the same room - all telling each other goodnight before bed. The viewer is able to see them as a familial group - bound together and leaning on one another. 

Our protagonist, Zeke, goes into town to sell the cotton his family has raised for $100. Rather than returning the $100 back to his family, Zeke gets hustled in a dance hall by a con man named Hot Shot and a harlot name Chick. Zeke confronts Hot Shot about his trickery, only for Hot Shot to pull a gun on him. The two begin to tussle, as the gun lets off a couple of shots. Everyone in the dance hall scatters, including Hot Shot and Chick. After everyone leaves, Zeke becomes aware that his brother, Spunk, not only followed him into town, but was in the dance hall when bullets went flying - one of them catching Spunk and killing him. Zeke begins to break down - blaming himself for the lost money and dead brother. After taking his dead brother back to his family, they break down in mournful song. The whole community comes together to mourn the loss of Spunk - all of them wailing and singing biblical songs. Once again, we see the surrounding community come together as a collective. Where they were once working together and then dancing and singing together, now they are mourning together also. Vidor portrays this black community as being a tight-knit group - supporting each other through joys and hardships. Once Zeke removed himself from the collective to go into town on his own, he faced the temptation of selfishness. He sought the company of a harlot and gambled his money away to make more for the two of them. Away from his community, Zeke lost sight of the collective comfort and indulged himself in individualist comfort. These actions ended up hurting both himself and his community back home - leaving it with no money for their work and one less member. 

After the death of his brother, Zeke asks his father how to stop the suffering. His father tells him to look up to the heavens and seek the angels, who were coming down to protect him. Looking up at the cloud, he tells his father that he can see the angels. It seems that Vidor is revealing the ideological landscape of the black experience. Southern black Americans held tightly to their Christian belief systems throughout the early twentieth century and onward. These communities, all too familiar with repeated suffering, have used Christianity as a mechanism to provide reason to their existence - all the joys and sorrows. The Christian doctrine can also said to be an important part of white America in the 20th century as well - however, the passion and spirituality associated with black culture becomes a far more evident fingerprint, given the community's use of originality regarding gospel and congregation. Vidor utilizes this originality throughout the film, making good use of original spiritual gospel songs. 

After looking up to the heavens that fateful night, we fast forward in time to see Zeke become a preacher. His family now travels town to town as he gives sermons and performs gospels. The harlot who once bamboozled him, is in attendance at one of his sermons. Feeling shameful of her past wrongdoings, she joins the collective into their religious adherence - even becoming baptized. The only note of question is her peculiar behavior. Whereas everyone holds this existential ideology with passionate reverence, she behaves erratically. She sings a little TOO loud, her praises are a little TOO animate, and her convulsions - especially during her baptism - causes concerns from Zeke's family. Things get even more uneasy when Zeke carries Chick away during one of her convulsions into a nearby tent. Away from the the crowd, Zeke becomes sexually tempted by Chick, until his mother interrupts. Zeke temptation to selfishly indulge in sexual desires risk his acceptance of the community. The Christian and religious ideology the community practices enables their conceptual understanding of personal and collective moral conflict. Apart from a more contemporary secular perspective of psychology, a rural early 20th century American community uses allegorical abstractions as an understanding for cerebral emotionality and rationality. A line like "the devil is pulling ahold of me" becomes an emblematic representation of abstract ideas regarding a collective moral. 

As an counteraction to the temptation of the looked-down upon newcomer harlot, Zeke becomes engaged to Missy, the virtuous maiden of the family and community. However, this does not last very long, as Zeke walks away from Missy during a celebration to chase after Chick. Missy returns to the celebration, crying out in pain over her rejection. The collective collapse on the floor with her, wailing and singing together, sharing each other's pain for their lost shepherd. With this visually striking shot, Vidor is able to capture the shared collective experience of the aching group. The shot is able to posses the abstract representation of the tight-linked aggregate - all sharing the emotional well-being of one for the many. With this notion, Vidor is saying that the community, and more importantly the church, have formed themselves into a more shared cooperative. This creates a stronger unity, enabling them to celebrate together and share in each other's suffering - the strength of the united is able to overcome emotional fallouts of individualist perspective, thereby creating a stronger force to combat suffering and moral corruption. 

 This also presents another important element regarding Vidor's direction. Vidor's auteuristic style is that of the 'epic.' Much like with his film from 1925, The Big Parade, Vidor amplifies the emotionality of the individual characters by pulling that emotion into the larger landscapes of the story. With The Big Parade, the love and suffering of the two leads were felt even more dramatically due to their congruency with the large scope and landscape of World War I. With Hallelujah, Vidor makes use of the collective's shared emotional responses to amplify the emotions of the individuals. To have the individual character of Missy cry out in agony is one thing, but to have a full congregation crying out in agony makes her emotional state more intensified to the viewer. Vidor does this throughout the entirety of the film. By having the emotional state of the individual amplified through the rousing state of the collective, the small becomes larger, forcing the viewer to reconcile with the humanity taking place. 

Zeke has now run away with Chick and has started a new life with her as we skip ahead months later. Chick has now become fatigued by the mundanity of her new life with Zeke and has started cheating on her old flame Hot Shot. After catching them trying to run away together, Zeke hastily pursues them, even firing his shotgun at their runaway carriage. After one of the wheels falls off the fast moving carriage, Chick falls off and into the mud. Zeke holds her as she cries, telling him that she's lived her life aimlessly - that she's "never really known what she's wanted." She tells him that she's been split into two, restlessly trying to find meaning to no avail. She tells him that the devil is getting closer to her, reaching out his claws. Once again, the characters use religious symbolism to explain the existential mechanisms they travers through life. Throughout the film, the heavily religious themes are used by Vidor to tell a very human story of people seeking meaning. Their lives are filled with suffering, unable to reconcile the meaning of that suffering. The biblical idioms and ideas are used by the characters as interpretations of their world - making sense of the joys and sorrows they experience. 

After Chick dies in Zeke's arms, Zeke chases down Hot Shot and kills him. It is at this point that Zeke has reach the lowest point of his self-ascribed moral doctrine. He became a pastor to enable his virtue, hoping to eradicate any further bruising of his community due to the fallouts of his selfishness. However, we was not able to bypass his own passions and human fallacy. His quest for absolution was not bought by his self-appointed importance. It is apparent to the viewer that his absolution actually lied with the bond from his community, as this collective was the emotional stability and salient theme that held the story and the characters together. Perhaps this represents the church itself; the point of focusing on the acceptance and forgiveness of the individuals in the group allows for the redemption of moral fallout and assists in the preservation of the self through the presentation of the communal. After his fallout, Zeke returns home. His family welcomes him back with open arms, joyously singing together - grateful for the return of their wayward son and shepherd. He walks back into the life of his family and community, all his sins forgiven and forgotten. 

With "Hallelujah," Vidor was able to make his first ever sound film. The black perspective was literally given voice through one of the first handful of the films in the talking era. It's exploration of the black experience through it's community, faith, and suffering offered viewers the opportunity to see a more emotional experience for this group - something audiences at the time were not accustomed to. Vidor's humanist take on this American culture provided the opening sound era with black voices, thereby creating a progressive film that enabled a spiritual and existential look at human experience.