Hallelujah (1929)

Director King Vidor

Vidor on the set with Daniel L. Haynes and Nina Mae McKinney

,Nina Mae McKinney

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HALLELUJAH          B-                                                                                                               USA  (109 mi)  1929  d: King Vidor

If Hallelujah is to be faulted, it is for the complete exclusion of whites, even at the prison, and the subsequent imprecision about the family’s relationship to the land they work.                       —Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simmon from King Vidor, American, 1988

King Vidor’s first sound film, frequently touted as the first all-black cast film produced in Hollywood, but it is actually predated by the more obscure HEARTS OF DIXIE (1929) starring Stepin Fetchit.  Although conceived as a Movietone synchronized sound film, King Vidor’s film had to be shot silent and dubbed afterwards using sound from a studio, where the added soundtrack revolutionized the way pictures were perceived.  Born in Galveston, Texas, where his father owned sawmills employing black labor, while his black nanny was more of a mother to him than his own, King Wallis Vidor transformed his childhood love of photography into documentary filmmaking by the time he was a teenager, eventually becoming one of the more distinctively poetic of all the silent film directors.  Avoiding both popular imagery and musical fantasy, Vidor achieved what might be called “lyrical social realism,” a blend of subjective vision and objective reality, perhaps more evident in his Depression-era social exposé, Our Daily Bread (1934), as this film comes across as a white fantasy, a projection of black life through the eyes of a white filmmaker, as the intended audience when the film was made was primarily white, so the chosen Negro dialect from the days of slavery as well as the blatantly stereotypical shiftless behavior all fits into what was viewed as socially acceptable at the time, where black life was depicted as a form of paternalistic entertainment for white audiences.  Vidor’s film was described at the time as a revolutionary, even subversive film in a racial context when “Negro films” were widely despised and black American audiences enthusiastically greeted the film.  It’s important to understand that when this was made, the only black roles of any magnitude were filled by white artists in blackface, the best known of which remains Al Jolson from THE JAZZ SINGER (1927).  Coming so soon after the devastating effects of the Great Depression, Hollywood’s answer was to provide commercial cinema that was primarily escapist in nature, something to take viewer’s minds off the harsh reality of the times.  While activist scholar and prolific writer W.E.B. Du Bois wrote only two film reviews in his lifetime, one was a scathing review of BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), while the other offered a more positive appraisal of this film in The Crisis, “Hallelujah is a great drama.  It touches the religion of a deeply superstitious people who took refuge from physical disaster in spiritual tradition, hope and fantasy…It is the sense of real life without the exaggerated farce and horseplay which most managers regard as inseparable from Negro character, that marks Hallelujah as epoch-making.”  One of the observations from Du Bois is that because there are no white characters, the film as a whole is not entirely believable, yet he was especially fond of the use of “Negro folk music.”  Literally steeped in gospel music, where spiritual themes are interwoven throughout the storyline, the film is conceived as a morality tale of sin and redemption, while also exploring the roots of home and community.  Opting in favor of rural landscapes, opening in the cotton fields of the American South to a choral arrangement of Stephen Foster’s Way Down Upon the Swanee River, a poor black family is seen harvesting the final crop of the season, as we see their hopes and dreams wrapped around the prosperity of what they hope it will bring.  This family is all smiles, fitting the white image of blacks who were happy and content with the bondage of slavery, so even after emancipation, their life and ambitions as sharecroppers are pretty much unchanged, still living in a one-room shack while toiling in the same cotton fields, yet Vidor presents this in almost idyllic, storybook fashion, where a repeated image near the beginning and end resembles a dated photograph found in any family photo album.  The terms “Mammy” and “Pappy” are used affectionately as terms of endearment, yet they are holdovers from a time when reading and education were outlawed and prohibited on the plantations.  Unfortunately, MGM studios asserted Vidor provides a certain “authenticity” about the black experience, as if growing up in the South adds credibility, where the dialogue initially showed little regard for the frequent use of “nigger,” “darky,” and “pickaninny,” terms that blacks openly resented, even at that time, and the actors were successful in resisting any use of such offensive language, yet this is a whitewashed and thoroughly idealized depiction of one family’s life and struggles, where an argument can be made that Vidor views black character as fixed and irredeemable, despite their best efforts to move beyond that moral straightjacket.  Nonetheless, we hear Mammy remark, “T’aint what you was, it’s what you is today,” which is much more open-ended.     

It’s important to note that more than six million blacks fled the hardships of the rural Jim Crow South following WWI, some opting for urban areas in the South, but most were part of the Great Migration (African American) moving out West and into the major cities of the North, where the significance of that migration was profound, opening up new opportunities, offering a promise of a renewed sense of self-reliance and self-respect, yet this reality is completely omitted from the film.  For Vidor, he had little interest in depicting what life was like in established black communities, formulating their own cultures and identities, instead Vidor seems to suggest whites were in a better position than blacks to authorize an authentic black experience, as he continues to equate blacks through the prism of white ownership.  As the family is introduced, we also see them singing work songs, where there is no moral distinction between gospel music and traditional field songs, as they’re all part of the black experience, but a pronounced joy comes from the naturalness of seeing their children dancing, yet these ingrained images of docile blacks, young and old, happily performing back-breaking work in the fields under the hot sun represent part of the American consciousness of the times, where there is no historical reference to slavery or reconstruction, instead the film inextricably links the black experience to religion, musicality, performance, and sexuality.  We meet Parson Johnson (Harry Gray, who was actually a former slave), his wife, Mammy (Fanny Belle DeKnight), Missy Rose, his adopted daughter (Victoria Spivey), younger son Spunk (Everett McGarrity), a few younger children (Robert Couch, Milton Dickerson, and Walter Tait), and the film’s main character, the Parson’s oldest son, Zeke Johnson (Daniel L. Haynes, who served as Paul Robeson’s understudy in the Broadway musical Show Boat).  A particularly affecting scene is watching them all crawl into their beds at night while each says good night to all the others, showing the intimacy of the common bond, but also how much they rely upon each other.  Zeke is charged with taking the cotton the family has picked into town and getting a good return for it, bringing along his younger brother Spunk, where the processing of the cotton takes on a documentary form, while the adventure of going into a big city offers the lure of temptation, which is immediately evident once Zeke has money in his pocket, as he’s swindled by a young seductress known as Chick (Nina Mae McKinney, only 17 at the time of shooting, spotted by Vidor in the Broadway show Blackbirds), working in tandem with her gambling/hustler boyfriend Hot Shot (William Fountaine).  But when Zeke quickly gets fleeced of all his money in a crooked game of craps, he suspects he’s been cheated, pulling out a switchblade with Hot Shot drawing a pistol, but in the ensuing brawl they end up accidentally shooting his brother instead, leaving him in a poor predicament, forced to return home penniless and with a dead brother in the wagon.  In the weeping and moaning that follows the funeral drama, Zeke breaks out into song, finding his voice as a Baptist preacher, providing comfort to his family, while eventually broadening his reach, becoming known throughout the South as a traveling revivalist preacher, where crowds of people await to hear him, including Chick, who initially ridicules him, but the power of his sermon wins her over, but in doing so he openly reveals his sexual desire for her, sending shockwaves through his family, who can’t believe their eyes, quickly bringing some sense back to him.  In response, he decides to marry the virtuous Missy, thinking this will ward off all his sinful desires.  But when Chick shows up for one of his open-air river baptisms, something of a spectacle to behold, with masses of people flocking to the river in seek of salvation, her baptism goes awry, with Zeke instead throwing his life away to run off with her.  It’s an interesting turn of events, with Zeke finding himself working in a sawmill, where he’s too exhausted for her when he gets home, so she quickly tires of that routine, calling upon Hot Shot to come rescue her.  Their plans to escape go haywire, with Zeke chasing after them through a forest, but a buggy accident severely injures Chick after one of the wheels falls off, literally dying in his arms, before tracking down Hot Shot in an elaborate chase through a swamp and brutally killing him, a crime of passion that sends him off to a penitentiary where his punishment is breaking rocks all day as part of a chain gang.

While there’s a heavy-handed aspect to all this, with an operatic storyline that feels overdetermined, offering few real surprises, yet certainly one of them is that this is a musical, typically lighter in tone, yet this has a fatalistic darkness that can feel oppressive to watch, as the film is literally drowning in human sorrow and suffering, offering little in the way of relief, despite the grace note of the title, yet the musical numbers literally saturate this film in spirituality and human salvation, beginning with the optimism of the opening, Hallelujah! (1929) -- (Movie Clip) Ain't No Nothin' To Buy YouTube (3:27), which plays out like a dream, where the promise of tomorrow is always better than today.  But tomorrows are fraught with unexpected dangers, where the soaring vocals of an Irving Berlin song lay the groundwork for the close knit family ties, reminding viewers just how much they rely upon one another, something of a refrain for the rest of the film, Hallelujah! (1929) -- (Movie Clip) Waiting At The End Of The ... YouTube (3:31), with the Dixie Jubilee Singers also credited.  These songs are immediately contrasted by the earthiness of a juke joint, as Chick breaks out into a provocative blues/jazz dance number also written by Irving Berlin, Swanee Shuffle | Hallelujah | Warner Archive YouTube (4:17), with viewers alerted to the abrupt change in tone, accentuating the decadence and moral excesses of black female sexuality, where it’s easy to see how she can be described as a seductress, or a black Jezebel from the Old Testament, where vice and sin are temptations awaiting all men.  The solo aspects of these Irving Berlin songs written exclusively for this picture are clearly differentiated by the choral aspect of the earlier gospel numbers, which have a way of bringing people closer together, bound in faith and spirituality, an accentuated theme of this film, which is especially pronounced in Zeke’s sermons, where people are asked to get on the train for glory and not be deterred by the impulsive temptations of the devil, a message the preacher himself fails to take to heart. Gospel sounds abound in Zeke’s transformation from sinner to preacher, where an open display of public mourning ends with the entire community completely transformed by his message, culminating with the singing of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Hallelujah! (1929) -- (Movie Clip) And Zekiel Became A Preacher YouTube (3:42).  At his lowest moments, music all but disappears from the film, leaving Zeke alone to wrestle with his own conscience.  But when Zeke finally returns home at the end, he is embraced not only by his loving family, but by the familiar gospel refrains that welcome him back once again, finally taking Missy for his wife, yet this also adds an element of predictability and sentimentality as well, where it’s easy to see the connections between this film and Paul Robeson’s Show Boat, especially the prominent use of a riverboat, where music dominates the emotional landscape as both take audiences through a journey through the American South.  Du Bois believed firmly in the power of art, yet his initial enthusiasm was perhaps dampened by the film’s failure to address the social conditions of black communities, seemingly existing in a void, with no historical reference points and no inkling of political consciousness, where the hopes associated with an all-black cast are quickly replaced by the inevitable reality that this is largely a white depiction of that rarely seen world onscreen.  Shot in and around Memphis, Tennessee during the Jim Crow era, it’s worth mentioning that the white director and film crew stayed at the prestigious Peabody Hotel, legendary for its historic charm going back to 1869, while the black actors had to stay elsewhere, interspersed throughout black neighborhoods.  While the film was screened in the North to much acclaim, Southern theater owners refused to show it, preventing the film from ever making money, setting the fault lines for how black films would be exhibited in the future, a reflection of a divided nation still at odds over the racial implications from the Civil War.  The film was nominated for an Academy Award in 1930 for Best Director, but Clarence Brown’s ROMANCE (1930) starring Greta Garbo ultimately prevailed, while in 2008 the film was selected into the Library of Congress National Film Registry, Complete National Film Registry Listing.

Hallelujah (1929) entire film with multiple subtitle options on Fshare TV (1:39:55)

Foxy Brown

 

Peter Brown and Pam Grier

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOXY BROWN      B-                                                                                                             USA  (94 mi)  1974  d:  Jack Hill 

To me, what really stood out in the genre was women of color acting like heroes rather than depicting nannies or maids.  We were redefining heroes as schoolteachers, nurses, mothers, and street-smart women who were proud of who they were.  They were far more aggressive and progressive than the Hollywood stereotypes . . . My movies featured women claiming the right to fight back, which previously had been out of the question.  My roles were written as vanguard personalities who were the first to defend themselves against violence and prejudice.

—Pam Grier from her personal memoirs, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts, 2010 

Blaxploitation films of the 60’s and 70’s were synonymous with the transforming image of black identity, visibly altering representations of blackness, subverting previous stereotypical Hollywood images, in particular the meek and submissive roles that were offered to blacks at the time, where one of the underlying benefits of the genre was actually employing blacks on a large scale for the first time, probably in greater numbers than any other time in history, either before or since, but the period was short-lived.  These films, however, revealed a new image of black individuality and power, supported by black urban musical soundtracks and heavily exaggerated fashion statements, these low-budget films targeted a young black male audience, yet the producers and investors profiting from these films were almost exclusively white.  In true Hollywood tradition, Blaxploitation films replaced old stereotypes of submissive blacks like nannies or maids with new stereotypes of hyper-sexualized action figures, who were violent, anti-social blacks living in a fictionalized ghetto world characterized by vice and lawlessness.  Coinciding with the rising Black Power movement, these films could only emulate what was transpiring culturally, where the protagonist typically featured a socially and politically conscious black hero who was usually male, almost always working independently, often rotating numerous sexual partners simultaneously, specifically attacking individuals rather than larger institutions or systems as the source of his oppression.  While Black Power and the Hollywood Blaxploitation era overlapped, the former was concerned with self-determination within the black community, offering a sense of solidarity that valued and supported black cultural products, often verging on an economic agenda of black nationalism, with liberation of their people as a stated goal, Hollywood almost exclusively piggybacked on the surface image and not the substance, combining sex and violence, lining the pockets of whites on a much larger scale than what blacks were paid (for the 1972 film THE LEGEND OF NIGGER CHARLEY, lead actor Fred Williamson was paid $14,000 while the producer made $14 million), where the white business model was in complete contrast to black power aspirations.  In essence, Blaxploitation films were a cartoonish version of Black Power, basically parroting the rhetoric for profit, where the industry’s aims were directly at odds with any rising social or political movement.  At least initially, women were marginalized in these films as well, as they were in the Black Power movement, but Hollywood had no political agenda, where there are a number of examples in American history when black music, fashion, style, and art were repackaged by white artists and sold to white audiences, with Elvis Presley being the primary example, forever known as “The King,” yet it’s no secret that Sam Phillips of Sun Records wanted to bring black music to a wider audience, pioneering a style of music called rockabilly which fused country music with Rhythm and Blues, selling more records in the broader white market.  Similarly, most of the Blaxploitation era films were released through large production companies owned and operated by whites, where only a handful were produced, written, or directed by blacks.  SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADDASSSSS SONG (1971), SHAFT (1971) and SUPER FLY (1972) were all directed by black directors, but they were financed by white production companies, where 95% of the money from production and distribution fell into white hands.  But without Pam Grier in FOXY BROWN, there would be no Jennifer Beals in FLASHDANCE (1983) or Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), glorified crowd pleasers of female empowerment.      

Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson (rivals onscreen, but best of friends) entered the Blaxploitation business as aggressive action heroines, renegade avenging angels hellbent on kicking ass, with Grier publicized as “the baddest One-Chick Hit-Squad” and “the meanest chick in town.”  In the opening psychedelic credits sequence Pam Grier is made to resemble a black female James Bond, with a musical soundtrack by Motown’s Willie Hutch, “She’s brown sugar and spice but if you don’t treat her nice she’ll put you on ice!,” yet her sexualized image largely fits the male notion of liberation and empowerment, fitting into the lone avenger profile made even more famous by Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson in their vigilante justice movies, but Grier personifies, in the eyes of men, a voluptuous black woman, wearing revealing low-cut attire, over-sized earrings, sexy jumpsuits, a large, perfectly coiffed afro, carries a diminutive revolver that she pulls out of said afro or her bra, but is also handy with a shotgun, kickboxing, and a bar stool, not to mention a badass attitude.  While working alone, she’s not averse to turning to men for a helping hand, convincing a group of black liberationists (with a poster of George Jackson on the wall) to help her seek “justice,” though it sounds to them more like revenge than justice.  “You just handle the justice, and I’ll handle the revenge myself.”  Coming on the heels of the more critically acclaimed COFFY (1973), Grier established herself as an icon in the industry, immediately labeled the “Queen” of the genre, establishing a reputation this film only enhances and glorifies, providing her with her most iconic character, forever associated with the role which had a huge impact on popular culture, the first real female action hero, among the first black women to headline theater marquees and make the studios copious amounts of money, the first black woman to grace the cover of Ms. magazine, and a prime example of the liberated woman of the 70’s.  One thing can be said for Pam Grier, she’s always brought a fierce independence and a swaggering character to her roles, thoroughly dominating every scene she’s in, proving she’s quite capable of carrying a film, offering something unique, fusing feminist sensibilities with black nationalist radicalism, while maintaining a near impossible standard of beauty, certainly prone to violence, meeting fire with fire when standing up to her male counterparts, while always remaining cool under pressure, eventually becoming one of the more universally beloved figures in the industry.  While no doubt featured as a sex object, there aren’t really nude scenes, instead there are flash moments of titillation, where she goes undercover as a prostitute connected to the drug trade, hoping to get closer to the ringleaders, revealing wigs and outfits galore, yet more than anything the genre accentuates violence, judged by an elevated standard of machismo, where the enemy gets their comeuppance.  While her goals are laudable, and her combat skills off the charts, these films helped raise the consciousness of black youth, suddenly idealized through images of strength and power, yet in every finale the enemy was a corrupt cadre of wealthy whites who monopolized the drug trade in black communities.  The era of Blaxploitation films reminds us of 70’s style fashion, funky soundtracks, shoddy B-movie production values, and generic storytelling featuring stereotypical characters of drug pushers, prostitutes, and pimps within the black community which is infested by a flow of drugs generated by corrupt whites.  These stereotypes are just as egregiously insulting as prior Hollywood versions, just changed to suit the genre.  This fictionalized white enemy misses the mark, as corruption is more deeply embedded in the halls of power, where knocking off a few individuals would have little effect, yet this overly simplistic agenda remains firmly implanted in the minds of a generation of kids who grew up on this stuff, often failing to extract a core reality from fiction.   

Often the theme of these films is built upon betrayal, with Foxy’s boyfriend Michael Anderson (Terry Carter) undergoing an identity transformation through plastic surgery, an undercover agent working for the Feds, who presumably died, at least for the newspapers, cutting all ties to his former identity, now starting anew.  He and Foxy snuggle under the sheets at the hospital, causing the nurse providing a sponge bath a bit of commotion when she arrives unexpectedly, as he’s obviously aroused.  But perhaps the hardest pill to swallow is that Link (slimeball Antonio Fargas, likely named after the black character in the popular TV show The Mod Squad) is Foxy’s brother, in trouble right from the outset, having to call upon his big sister to bail him out, with her reading him the riot act for getting into trouble for the umpteenth time, in debt to the tune of $20,000 to the mob, but of course, claiming it’s not his fault.  But he does get to utter the infamous line, “That’s my sister, baby.  And she’s a whole lotta woman!”  Seeing no other way of getting out from under the debt, he double-crosses his sister, a dumbass thing to do, but he’s Antonio Fargas, who’s built a career out of fucking up in every movie or television episode he’s ever been in, but his ratting costs Anderson his life, gunned down on the street, where Foxy immediately fingers her brother, who’s already knee deep in a plentiful coke distribution operation, but the drug suppliers kill him when they discover his relation to Foxy, their latest nemesis.  Kathryn Loder, a B-movie heavy, plays Miss Katherine, the brains behind the operation, using her man-toy plaything Steve Elias (Peter Brown) as the muscle, employing two goons to take care of dirty business, the two hoods roughed up by Foxy when protecting her brother, so they have an axe to grind.  Foxy aligns herself with Claudia (Juanita Brown) in a sting operation designed to bribe a judge (there are hilarious penis references), both fleeing to safety afterwards, but Claudia screws up, found at a local watering hole, which turns out to be an all-white dyke bar, with women dressed very boyishly, made to look extremely unattractive, looking like truck drivers, in stark contrast to the overtly feminized and skin-baring black women.  This distinct racial and sexual separation is part and parcel of the exploitation genre, relying upon stereotypes that place an emphasis on women’s physical appearance and behavior, breaking out into utter mayhem when Foxy tries to haul her out of there, a rip-roaring bar fight that suggests women can pack a punch, with Foxy breaking bar stools over other women’s heads, but she’s captured by Katherine’s men while trying to escape.  Miss Katherine plans to get her hooked on heroin and send her to Haiti for the sex trade, dreaming about all the sadistic damage she could inflict, also thinking she can make back some of the money Foxy’s cost them.  While in captivity, however, it gets a little dicey, tied to the bed, at the mercy of a couple of sleazeballs who keep upping her injections, and just when you think all hope is lost, Foxy outsmarts her kidnappers with some sly maneuvers, blowing up a drug manufacturing operation in the process.  But Foxy vows revenge not only for her boyfriend and her brother, but for all the blacks who’ve been victimized, the kind of speech that would draw applause in the theater, advocating the position of a black revolutionary through female empowerment.  Where it all leads is way over the top, as there are some sick minds in the exploitation business, getting down into the gutter, where ghastly and appalling behavior is normalized as “entertainment.”  Jack Hill pulls out all the stops for this one, levying some of the most brutal violence in Grier’s career, playing into a revenge drama fantasia with perverse pleasure.  But the Blaxploitation era was short-lived, roundly condemned by black social organizations for their addiction to violence and promotion of black stereotypes, as viewer sophistication and political appetites changed, along with a growing apathy in our nation’s direction, with Nixon and Hoover’s law and order campaign firmly entrenched into the fabric of American life, still biting us in the ass today.