Hallelujah

King Vidor talked MGM into making the first all-Black-cast musical of the major studio era, and when the studio balked at the risk he put his own salary into it. The story starts in the cotton fields: young Zeke loses the crop money at a gambling table, an accident follows, and he becomes a travelling preacher. Then the same woman reappears. Its standing today is double-edged, because it opened space to Black performers that the period otherwise refused them while also carrying the period's stereotypes, and neither half can be waved away. Technically it is a landmark in sound, with the exteriors post-synchronised. The chase through the swamp still lands. Who it is for: viewers interested in early sound cinema and in the contested pages of American film history. Who it is not for: anyone who will be troubled by the racial representation of the time.